 So it's probably 6.30 on somebody's clock somewhere. So I'm going to start with my script. As a preliminary matter, I am the chair of the Arlington School Committee. This open meeting of the committee is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12, 2020, due to the current state of emergency and the commonwealth due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. In order to mitigate the transmission of the virus, we have been advised and directed by the commonwealth to suspend public gatherings as such the governor's order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location further. All members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The order which you can find posted with agenda materials for this meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded so that the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Ensuring public access does not ensure public participation in such, unless such participation is required by law, this meeting will feature public comment. For this meeting, the Erlandton School Committee is convening by Zoom as posted on the town's website identifying how they may join. Please note that the meeting is being recorded and some attendees are participating via video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that others may be able to see you, take care not to screen share your computer, anything you broadcast may be captured by the meeting. All of the materials for this meeting except any executive session materials are available on the Novus agenda dashboard and we recommend the members in the public follow the agenda as posted on Novus unless I know otherwise. I will introduce each agenda, each speaker on the agenda. After they conclude, I will go down the list of members inviting each by name to provide any comment, question or motions. Please hold until your name is called. Please remember to mute your phone or computer when you are not speaking. Please remember to speak clearly and in a way that helps generate accurate minutes for any response. Please wait until I yield the floor to you and state your name before speaking. If members wish to engage in political with other members, please do so through the chair, taking care to identify yourself. Each vote taken in this meeting will be conducted by a roll call vote. So I want to make sure that we can hear everybody. So I'm going to do attendance. I'm going to do the members and staff and then Dr. Bodie, I'll need some support on the other folks who are here to make sure that I call on them but I'll do the ones that I know I can do first. So Ms. Exton. Mr. Cardin. Yes, thank you. Dr. Allison Ampe. Here. Mr. Thielman. Yes, here. Mr. Schuchman. Good evening. Mr. Hayner. Yes. Okay, and I'm Jane Morgan. Dr. Bodie. Present. Dr. McNeil. Here. Mr. Spiegel. Here. Mr. Mason. Here. Ms. Elmer. Here. Ms. Keyes. Here. All right, this is where it gets dicey because now we got a couple pages. So then I also see Mr. Merringer. Here. I'm here, Maxwell. Present. Ms. Parrots, I think. No, maybe not. Yep. I just don't hear her yet. All right, and Dr. Bodie, who else are we? So I see you, Ms. Is it Dr. Franchi or Ms. Franchi? It's Dr. Franchi. Okay, Dr. Franchi. Hi, Franchi. Franchi. She is here and also my presentation from the dental work. Cindy Sheridan. Karen is here who has multiple titles in the district, but one has to do with all of her safety protocols. And I also see Ms. Caroustus. Yes. Yep. And Ms. Liner is here. I am not sure. I don't see her yet. No, but Ms. Caroustus is here. And Ms. Caroustus is the assistant principal at Dallen as well as one of our two elementary coordinators for the remote academy. Perfect. Okay, so I think we've got everybody. So the first item on the agenda is public comment and we had one person sign up for public comment and she is here, which is great. So this is just a reminder that the committee, as a matter of policy, we don't respond to public comment. So all right, Dr. Deb Savage. Hi. Thank you for allowing me to speak. I'll be as quick as I can. I'm the founder of the Arlington Special Education Alliance. We're a networking and advocacy group for Arlington parents whose children have special educational needs. Many of our members are very grateful for the extraordinary efforts being made by the district to deal with the COVID situation. They've been listening very closely to district conversations since school closed last spring. They understand the complexity of the challenges at hand. And they feel that they've been fairly patient as APS works to resolve these challenges and they are willing to make hard choices in terms of the educational options available to their children. But there are a couple of ongoing issues related to special education that many parents are really angry about right now. And I would like to summarize for you here. I know some of you have received letters from individual parents. I have copies of some of those myself. One category is the last minute changes in class and teacher assignments that were made this past weekend for special education students who are in the remote academy. The class teacher assignments for most students were given out last week. The kids had a chance to do meet and greets and get to know their teachers and some of their classmates. And then a lot of special education parents, as you know already, got emails or phone calls this weekend, some of them on Sunday, the day before school started, stating that their child's class and teacher summit was going to be changed. And sometimes it was a change in school. No real explanation was given as to why there was no mechanism provided for obtaining an explanation on why and parents resorted to calling frontline teachers or sometimes administrators, whoever they could get on the phone to try and figure out what was going on, why this was happening. A lot of special education children have trouble with transitions and change even in the best of times. Last minute changes of this kind make it very difficult for them, for some of them to function socially. Their social and emotional health is an issue here. It makes it harder for them to learn. The anxiety goes up. When anxiety goes up, you second function skills go down. It's very, very difficult. And so a lot of parents were very, very angry about the last minute notice, the lack of explanation and the lack of a mechanism for actually talking to someone about what was going on. In addition, several parents who didn't reach someone in person in the district, these are high level administrators, were told you can keep your child in the originally scheduled class if you are willing to waive your child's special education services. Now, considering the fact that these kids are struggling already and the APS was unable to deliver a lot of special education services, mandated ones last spring, that was a rather astonishing suggestion. That's one category. A second category is for special education students who have chosen to attend school in person four days a week. There's been a lack of information or a lot of contradictory information on what the educational experience will be like on days three and four. Dr. Savage, I just wanted, so we do three minutes for public participation. So you just hit three minutes. Can you wrap up in like a minute? I will wrap up as quickly as I can. I'm hoping for a little leeway because I'm trying to represent a lot of parent comments here. I understand. We just have a policy about public. I will do my best. APS mentioned early that a lot of students, special ed students who came in four days a week might just be repeating on days three and four what they got on days one and two. Other parents had agreements. No, your child actually needs some help with asynchronous work and then APS has reneged on some of those agreements and some parents just can't get a straight answer. Public evidence of some of the last minute planning for special education students wasn't evidence today. It gives parents who had desperately tried to get a schedule for their child from anyone and everyone they could think of and never got an answer showed up. It gives not even having any idea which door they were supposed to go in after the general education and the BB kids had gone into the building about 10 kind each children and their parents were left standing on the lawn. One child started to cry. Ms, the principal came out and very kindly took them all in and said, we'll figure out where you are supposed to be. But the parent writes, please know that the message says that the highest needs kids in the school are left on the lawn with no plan in literal and figurative afterthought. So we're requesting a strong response on the part of the school committee to these issues. And we're also requesting the expedited scheduling of a separate Zoom meeting to discuss the special education issues and more detail in the near future. And thank you very much for allowing me to speak. Thank you. Okay, so the next item on the agenda is the, what is it actually listed as? The discussion and vote on an MOA with the Arlington Education Association. So tonight we have before us an MOA, a memorandum of agreement between the Arlington School Committee and the Arlington Education Association regarding the reopening of schools for the 2021, 2020, 2021 school year. This MOA represents many, many hours of negotiations between the AA and the district. So before we start, I just wanna express my gratitude to the AA, President Ms. Keys who is here with us tonight, her team as well as those who participated on the school committee and part of the district, Mr. Cardin, Mr. Hainer, Dr. Vody, Dr. McNeil, Mr. Spiegel, Mr. Mason, Ms. Peretz, Mr. Merringer, Madam Pair Maxwell, probably others who I have omitted. So, but thank you for bringing us this agreement tonight for our discussion and ultimately vote. So I guess I need a motion from somebody that's not me. So moved. Madam Chair. Yes, sir. Yes, Mr. Schliffman. I'd like to move approval of the MOA and authorize the chair to sign it on the committee's behalf. Any discussion? Thank you. So yes, thank you for introducing it. I also would love to thank the AEA for these difficult negotiations. It's been a very difficult period. There's been a lot of emotions on every side, but they came to the table prepared to discuss the issues and to get to an agreement, which we did reach before we opened the doors of school. On Monday, so everybody worked very hard to see each other decide and come to some sort of agreement on these issues. Certainly going forward, we're very fortunate to have a good working relationship with the AEA going forward. I think as the year rolls out, we have our teachers back in the building and hopefully we'll be spending more time working with them to fine tune everything that's happening. There's still a lot of moving parts, still a lot of scheduling issues, still a lot of things to be determined, but fortunately we have the agreement as the framework to move forward. So I also wanna thank the administrative team for coming up with creative solutions and also for leading us in this. Thank you. Anybody else? Okay. So on the motion by Mr. Schiffman, seconded by Dr. Allison Ampey on the approval of the MOA with the AEA, it's a lot of acronyms, Ms. Exton. Yes, Mr. Cardin. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampey. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Schiffman. Yes. Dr. Heiner. Yes. And I am also yes. All right. And okay, so next is the school opening update from Dr. Bodhi and Dr. McNeil. So I'm not sure who wants to start. I will start. Let me just give you an overview and there's a number of people here this evening to delve a little bit more in terms of the experience of this week. I want to put this in context. The school's opened beautifully this week. There were a lot of challenges to overcome in order for that to be to happen. And I want to thank all of our teachers, administrators for working the long hours that it took to get to this point. So like opening day, and it was for sure. It sounds to say that we're not bumps and there's not going to be things that we still need to continue to work out. There are. The thing that people need to remember is that we're creating two entirely new programs in our district. One is a remote academy, which we've never done before, that involves about a third of all of our students in the district. Those of us, I'm sorry, this has some dental work and I have a little bit of a talking through cotton a little bit, but we also have a hybrid program which is an entirely different schedule than we have had in the past. And it involves a combination of in-person asynchronous and as well as synchronous remote instruction as well. So it's been a lot to do and the feedback we get is going to help us improve upon what we do over the next couple of weeks. And but I do say that I had put out a Google Doc for everybody to fill in and by and large, it was a couple of glitches, but most of us very positive. I've had positive emails from parents as I know our principals have as well. So we have a couple of our principals here right now and maybe they would like to just make a comment. I know Mr. Merringer is here and Mr. Armani. And I think that Ms. Parris as well, as well as Madame Pierre Maxwell. So if you would just like to add a couple of comments because I think coming from your experience, it sort of helps give the community the picture of how the week went so far. Good evening everyone. I would like to maybe share a little bit about how this week went so far with the school committee members since I know that there was a direct reference to this morning and what had occurred. The staff and I had two beautiful first day on Monday and Tuesday, the children coming very excited to be in school. And I think all the adults also really happy to receive the children. There were no incident on the first day. No children were sent to the nurse. The children did extremely well the first day. The second, we had the remote learning and today was our first day with the BB children coming in the BB portion of the hybrid program. And so principal assistant principal Salvatore and I are outside in the morning, welcoming the parents and the children. And so are all the teachers from the classroom who have designated spot for all the children to enter the building according to their advisory where they send about 10 to 12 feet apart to come into the building. So this morning, as I've done and as Ms. Salvatore has done for the last three days, we, once we give the signal for everybody to enter because our children are all around the building. I don't know the people who are familiar to what the building looked like. There's a side where we have our tent that's somewhat between foster and Tufts. So we walk around the building to make sure that all the teachers, we said the time is signal to go in. So when I was making my final round to make sure that all the classroom have entered all the buses were all set, I walked onto where we had about six children who were outside with one of our special educator liaison. Our school social worker was still outside. Mrs. Griner was visiting Gibbs today working at the school. She was outside, talking to the parents and Mr. Ron Colossi who's one of our school council was outside. And so I walked and see there was a little girl. She looked upset because she didn't remember her teacher's name and she didn't remember which LC she was in. I approached her and I said, it's okay, all you need to know today is your name and I will help you find your LC. So I escorted her and there were two other children. I said, okay, anyone who's not sure who's their LC or who's their advisory teacher come with me and we'll figure it out. So we entered the building with Mrs. Van Goven, myself, Mr. Colossi. So we had about three to four staff, Mrs. Griner stayed outside in conversation with two of our parents who are pushed her and I entered the school with the rest of the children. So in a scale of representing that, we weren't ready for the children. We didn't know which door the children were coming in. The doors has been designated prior to the start of school. The teachers are not confused. It's normal. This was the second day and we had a few children who arrived just after the bulk of the children went inside in the company of their teachers and therefore they weren't able to quickly locate where they should have been, but we did have adults outside to welcome the children in and the rest of the day went in just similar to what we had on the first two AA days. So now in relation to our children who are invited to come for the four days because they are part of our high need groups, some of the children were in the media center, which is our library. So we can really organize the schedule to make it work. We did share with our parents that, yes, the plan is still the same, that some children may need a second dose of the same lesson. The special ed liaison in coordination with their classroom teachers will be making that decision and some children will be pulled out to access their asynchronous lesson or be able to be part of their synchronous lesson during the hybrid time in the building. So as of this afternoon, every special educator liaison have been assigned a room where they will be pulling out the children and will be in collaboration with the classroom teachers to make that work. It's a process we have explained to everyone we've never done it this way before. So it does take a minute to figure it out, but whether or not we have people prepared to support the children, we do have people to prepare to support the children. So we'll be spending hours to make sure we calculate it. There was a full power with the schedule because what we envisioned that was gonna happen in person did not translate into the schedule in power school. So it is true perhaps when the parents go into power school, they're not, it's not mirroring exactly what's happening in the building. And so since that we have a scheduler who's helping us out, I suppose from that end also, they're not used to having children repeating two days and have not figured out quite how to make it reflect in power school. If Fabienne was in on a Monday, Fabienne is also in a different cohort on a Thursday and Friday. So this is where we are. Yeah, so, you know, as I said, there are gonna be some bumps along the road and one of them has to do with our power scheduler. But overall, I have had comments from Gibbs parents that the experience of the last few days has been very positive. And I didn't know if there was any other principles. Just wanted to give a quick overview of how the first couple of days have gone. Kathy, I can go next. Okay. So, you know, I think admittedly, a lot of us were anxious coming back to school. We have not seen kids since March 13th, but it was nice to see over 300 students on Monday and see a different cohort of students on Thursday. So, you know, it was great. The kids were fantastic in lining up and getting directions. We really lucked out by getting some good weather so we could be going outside for lunch. And it helped us organize outside. I just want to thank the staff. I think they were great. They were flexible. They were really helping out kids. And I think about 9-9-30 on that first day and Monday, we were like, okay, this is school. There's less kids and there's masks and there's more rules and there's more protocols, but we got 13 and 14 year old kids ready to learn and we're ready to teach. So, I thought overall it went extremely well. I've talked to people who are in the remote academy and they seem like that has gone extremely well. People getting used to the Zoom links and the Zoom breakout. So, overall I'm really happy. Obviously still nervous of what will happen the next few weeks with health and other things that might be a little bit out of our control, but you know, I think if you walked into the Autism Middle School sometime this week, you would see pretty happy kids a little bit tired. You know, it was difficult being in some classes and you can't see facial expressions because half their face is covered up, but I think overall it wasn't perfect, but I think it went very well. And I think that speaks to the teachers who were great, but also to the students. They were fantastic in the building and I think families did a great job of preparing them to get ready to school and to get back to business. Thank you, Mr. Merringer. Yeah, I think you might jump in too. Can you hear me okay? Yep. I'm sorry, I'm in transit, so I pulled over in the car. Don't worry, I'm being safe, but I just really wanted to say how happy everyone was to be in school this week, both in person and online. I think the messages coming from the remote academy were incredibly positive. I heard from many, many families and students that they were feeling really good about that experience and that in person too, it was just, it was different, but there were also pieces of the in-person arrival that were really special in the fact that I think the smaller numbers of kids coming into school was allowing the whole scene to be just a little calmer for everyone. We had, I would have to say, at Hardy Elementary School, we had zero tears coming in and often in kindergarten, there can be a difficult transition. And just that we were all so impressed and the teachers kept commenting on how well the children were doing with all of these new things that we're putting in front of them. And I spent my days outside with them. We've been working really hard to keep a schedule in which, and like Mr. Merringer said, the weather was beautiful, so we were outside and today was a beautiful day. And just everyone is going, I think, to fall into a new kind of normal, but there are a lot of really great positives and we just were really proud of how well the teachers and the students and the families are all working hard to make this a great first week. So thank you, everyone. Thank you, Ms. Parrott, and congratulations for a great start. I'm happy to have somebody else. They would like to comment. The person who has done young ones work to have our remote Academy have a successful start is Sam Carusis, who is the assistant principal at Dallin. And I would do like to say a couple of words about how the start went. Sure, thank you, everybody. I think we had a meeting with teachers on Monday and everybody was very energized and wanted to share that really the kids seemed eager to be there. It was definitely an unusual experience for them to be on screen a lot of the time, but the kids were really engaged in Google Classroom and jumped back in willingly and excited about it. They said it was a much better day than they expected and they're having to get used to the pacing of the day because it's so much different than being in person. But we've kept in touch with them throughout the week and we're, as you can imagine, trying to address some of the bumps in the road, but it's been great. The staff has been fabulous and I can't wait to get into more of the classrooms and see how things are going. So everybody's done a great job. Thank you very much. So I think that everyone, unless there's somebody else who would like to say something, I think you get an idea of that from these reports that overall it was a very positive experience this week. And I'm not going to minimize it. There were some bumps that we have to look at and one of which has to do with some of our protocols around COVID. We've had a couple of situations this week which are each unique actually. In two of our cases that we had an issue around COVID, this was the result of the testing program that we entered in a partnership with the Arlington Department of Health and Human Services in doing testing of staff members. More than half of our staff actually participated in this program and it was from that testing that we found on Sunday that we had a staff person at Pierce who had tested positive. But this was our goal. Our goal was that we would try to minimize the possibility of COVID cases virus coming into our school buildings. And in that sense, it did achieve that goal. However, because of the level of contact tracing involved and the people who were designated as close contact, we felt that the building, and I say we, I also include the Department of Education and the Department of the Board of Health in Arlington that we needed to delay in-person learning just because of staffing issues. In fact, there have been several programs that have continued to run this week at Pierce because it's not an issue of lots of building itself. And actually we have Principal Amati here. I don't know if you wanted to say anything about the experience this week on that. Sure. Thank you members of school committee for allowing me to speak tonight. And thank you, Dr. Bodie, for your rapid response over the weekend as well as Cindy Sheridan current. So due to the facts that we figured out about halfway through Sunday, we had to divert from our original plan to open as planned on Monday and informed our teachers of the decision that we were gonna go with Sunday afternoon. And I was so impressed with the level of work that they did throughout the evening Sunday night to be able to open in a way that was organized that students had a really meaningful first day. And I couldn't say more, I can't say more about how wonderful the staff responded. Of course, we were disappointed. And then we got over that and we switched gears. And on Monday, I was able to go through a bunch of classrooms and I saw happy students. School was well attended. Teachers were working on systems and routines from the remote aspect of learning. And all things considering, I think it was a wonderful first day for our students and for our teachers. And our families were awesome in this. They had to change what they were doing in a matter of hours and I commend them as well. So thank you to the Pierce faculty and everyone involved in that. And thanks for your time this evening. Thank you very much. And thank you for your leadership over the weekend too. We spent a lot of time together as we worked it all out. And your staff and your students and your parents all needs to be commended. We had another incident at Thompson which everyone is aware of in which we also had a situation where we had a positive case. And this also came from the testing program that we had initiated with the Board of Health. So in this particular case, a lot of what we had already planned out became necessary that we had to quarantine two classrooms and then some of the adults in the school. Now in our planning for the last couple of months, our plan has been to keep students as best as possible in co-force so that we don't have students mixing among each other so that we have to actually close down entire school. And that's exactly what happened in this situation. We were able to limit the amount of quarantine that was necessary. This may actually, this is all right with you, Ms. Morgan. I have with me Dr. Franke and also Cindy Sheridan Curran who have been part of the planning and Ms. Curran is our liaison to the Department of Health and Human Services. And even though it's a little bit further on as the next thing on the agenda, before we talk about curriculum, which I know Dr. McNeil is looking forward to talking about, could we have them join in the conversation at this point? Sure, that'd be great. I wanna pull the discussion about health metrics and learning model transitions. I'll repeat that, like if we can try to be tight to our staff, they'll keep us all on track. Okay, I don't know if either one of them would want to add any comments so we'll hold the health metrics off until the next agenda item, all right. Dr. Franke, maybe they're not on here. All right, well, let's go on them. We'll come back to any questions about this. She is here. I see her, they're both here. I don't know if they can hear us though, because can they hear us? Yes, sorry about that. There was some background noise and I didn't hear the question. I didn't know if you wanted to add any comment about our experience this week in terms of the quarantine of the classes or the situation where we had to have a whole school go remote. Well, I mean, there were two very different reasons for having one go remote and one be going through quarantining and in terms of the quarantining, it went quite well. I thought at the Thompson, it was pretty smooth situation. We had a nice meeting, it went quickly. We moved things along. Board of Health got involved the next morning to help take over things. And I do know that folks at Thompson, Cindy and Christina did a lot of the contact tracing themselves because it was evening and they felt it was very important to get that messaging out. And I think so too, I think it was a wise decision. Board of Health did follow up with those families the next day so that there was consistency in dialogue. And in terms of the remote with Pierce, it made sense. It was a numbers game and it made sense why we had to go in that direction. I don't think anyone was necessarily at risk if you had started school the next day but it wouldn't have been a smooth transition. So it was a good move all around. Thank you for your help with that as well and as well as Ms. Kern. In the overview of the opening, there's two more reports. One is from Dr. McNeil and one is from Mr. Mason and Dr. McNeil, do you want to, unless the school may want to have any questions right now? So let's do Dr. McNeil and Mr. Mason and that. Perfect, then move on, okay. And then we'll do questions on this piece before we move on, yeah. Okay. So I have a really short report. I echo Dr. Bodie's sentiments about opening day. I applaud our building administrators for the work that they've done in order to prepare for our first day. I've heard wonderful reports about how things unfolded. We did have, and one of the things that I, that school committee members have asked about is Zoom. And I am so happy to report that we did not have any major incidents of students not being able to connect or to access their remote classes using Zoom. So it was a success. Of course, we had a couple of isolated incidents which you always anticipate not everything is gonna go perfect, but as it relates to some of the things that I was thinking about and had a little bit of anxiety about for the first day was the operation of using Zoom. And it was a, again, I say it was a success. We did have a couple of glitches, technology glitches with our Dreambox, which is now resolved. So parents should be able to access Dreambox. And I wanna thank our math director, Matt Coleman and our director of digital learning, Dr. Susan Bisson for working through those issues. And we are still working on CSAW. So I've asked teachers not to put activities or assignments into CSAW, which is for our kindergarten through second grade students for yesterday and today as we work through the issues and hopefully it will be up and running for Monday. So that concludes my report. Overall, it was, I think it was very successful with our technology. And I look forward to the days that are coming up and hearing more great reports from our building administrators. Okay, thank you, Dr. McNeil and Mr. Mason. And I'm sorry, I also wanna thank our staff. We could not have done this without our teachers, support people, everybody has chipped in and it was definitely a team effort with our building administrators and all of our staff. Sorry, thank you. Yes. In tonight, I wanna discuss updates on our efforts to ensure the safety of our students and staff. First, I wanna start out with discussing our efforts to ensuring our buildings were safe to reopen in occupancy for reoccupancy. And the safety of our building occupants was and continues to be our top priority. I would like to acknowledge the efforts of Jim Feeney and the facilities team that spent hours upon hours on prepping the schools for reoccupancy. And normally in the summer, the staff does routine maintenance of buildings and take on special capital projects while the buildings are unoccupied. However, not only did this team do their normal work, they did complete their work above and beyond to ensure that our buildings were safe, healthy and that all the equipment needed for reopen was working as designed or intended. So I would like to thank them for all their work to get us to this milestone to reopen. However, that work included many things that we've already discussed previously, which included making sure the ventilation equipment was working properly, meeting the standards, showing that faucets were fixed in the district so that sinks could be used for the increased hand washing and sanitizing. In some cases when faucets had timers or mechanisms to set a certain amount of the water flow, those were just to meet at least the 20 seconds that were required, place and hand rise throughout the districts with contact, paperless tower dispensers and making sure that we have contactless water fountains or turning off contact water fountains with touch-free bottle filling stations and that work will still remain ongoing. Also, the facility team made sure that all tents were ready for reopening and to be used for alternative outdoor spaces for instruction or eating or mass breaks. And all the work that they did to prepare for the reopening, they also have to do and continue to work to make sure our buildings remain clean. And so this week, yesterday, they did their first electrostatic treatments after the school buildings have been reoccupied to hopefully mitigate risks of the current coronavirus. And throughout the day, they've providing additional cleaning to high-frequency touch points, which would include doorknobs, crash bars, bathroom fosters, elevator buttons. I was in the elevator one day, I saw them. It was great to see that all this work was actually being done. And between cohorts on Wednesdays, they're making sure that they treat these classrooms to make sure that the next group of students are ready to go in. So I'm really proud of this group of people. And they came up with an elegant way. I'd like to show that elegant way that they display when a room has been electrostatically treated. If you don't mind, I'll share my screen real quick. And this is something that is left by the Custodial team. They was in teachers and students will walk into a classroom, they'll see something similar to when they walk into like a hotel to make sure that it's been cleaned and everybody's realizing that this space is ready for occupancy. I also, in order to reopen this, because we had to make sure that the buildings were safe. We have all the PPE, the distribution of the PPE. And I wanna thank Sue Franke and our procurement specialist, Neil Amond, for all the work that they did to make sure that we had locked in the supplies and made sure that we had a starting amount and that we'll continue to make sure that we have masks, desk shields or plexiglass barriers, gloves, gowns, lab coats and any other thing, like such as sanitizing wipes or any clean materials that we need during this time. Also wanna thank the transportation department. Everything has been going smooth. Even with the transportation department starting the year with just two drivers down, not with two drivers, but two drivers down and down four monitors for leaves. And I wanna acknowledge Steve Angelo who has made it work with this limited staffing resources. And hopefully this will improve, but due to those staffing issues, we, yes, as we brought up to your last meeting, we did have to suspend the Bishop bus, but otherwise we've made it work for all the other requirements that we need for the transportation and everybody's driving on the bus safely and three feet apart at least per the guidance and with masks on all times. And buses are electrostatically clean between the runs, which is very important because there's different students on the buses as we are doing double runs on each of these buses. I also, my last part, I wanna take the time to opportunity to discuss so an amazing job that Denise has done with the food services team and has been doing with serving breakfast and lunch to the students of Arlington. Denise and our team have stepped up to a plate since schools closed in March, as well as everybody else in the district. And the small core group of the Thompson food service staff help prepare food to continue feeding the students throughout the closure. And weekly deliveries were made providing seven days worth of food during that time. And at this point in time, over 65,000 meals have been provided to families of Arlington for all of these efforts. And I also like to acknowledge all of the volunteers who stepped up to support these efforts. Some of those included IT personnel, school nurses, deans from the high school and several bus drivers that helped deliver meals to families. As you may know, as you may or may not know, Arlington does not typically qualify for summer feeding programs. So when the schools closed in March, the USDA did provide a waiver that would allow districts to provide meals to children in March. And there are actually currently two bills that is pending with Congress that could possibly grant the USDA the authority to extend that waiver for this whole academic year. So I keep our fingers crossed for that to be approved. However, we're thankful that our current waiver is available until the end of this calendar year, December 31st. Now that schools have reopened in person, food service is still providing lunches for students in person and remote, which definitely caused some logistical issues. Each school handles lunch differently. And they are working close to tandem with the principals to make sure that the right amount of males are getting served at each school. And then on Tuesday night, when I was trying to discuss what to say for this evening, Denise was working with her team late. It was 9.30 at night, trying to prepare meals for our meal kits for Wednesday. And yesterday they served over 800 families that signed up, which was more than what they did in the summer, which they ended up serving 1,400 meal kits, which was over 14,000 meals since 10 meals are in each meal kit. It was an amazing effort to see all of this being done. And these meal kits include many great foods, and families who have not already signed up can sign up on a Google form that is posted on the district's website. Currently, we'll be working through the challenges as we get more people that do sign up. We're gonna have to look at different ways to handle this as we may not be able to deliver to everyone. We may have to look at other alternatives of methods of delivering food service, the food kits, the meal kits. But I also just have one second just to show just all the work that it takes to do this. I'll just show you a couple of pictures of them, and then I'm done with my part of the report. Sorry for taking so long. And so this is some of all the meal kits that they served last night, and all that they were preparing on Tuesday night to be delivered on Wednesday. And some of them actually had that delivered today on Thursday because they weren't able to deliver to everybody due to limited resources. But this is Denise and some of her teams. It just just shows the amount of work that goes into this and all the food and whatnot. But that's my part of my report. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mason. Denise Couchet and her team have been outstanding. I think what is particularly commendable besides managing all of this increase in home deliveries is that she's also still having school lunches in all of our buildings. So it's been a terrific. So before we go on to the next part of the agenda that has to do with COVID incidents and metrics, does anybody wanna ask any questions? Ms. Exton. I'm assuming everybody's gonna have questions. So if you don't, you can pass. I just wanted to start by echoing the thanks that the administration has already said to principals, to teachers, to the Pierce teachers for being particularly flexible. I can't imagine the night before you're expecting to start in person to switch to remote to the nursing staff and the custodial staff that have gotten the buildings ready for our students. I appreciate all of your work. I just have a few sort of tech questions, I guess, for Dr. McNeil. I know this gets asked a lot, but where do we stand on email access for like fourth and fifth graders? Have we decided that that's not happening? We are looking at alternative. I really don't wanna share it right now, but we're exploring something, a tool that can replace the email. So we are going to explore that. I understand that we have a demand for email, but we're still sticking to our concern about opening email for students at the elementary level will be problematic. So we're looking for alternative. And is that, I guess, so I understand not doing email for even younger students, but I'm just wondering if there's something in the works for making it easier for like the early elementary to access like their Zoom links themselves, parents get them as an email and then are sort of trying to figure out how to get it to their student on their student's device. And just, I don't know, I just wanna know that that's something that's sort of being thought about and addressed to make. Well, the access to Zoom links, we have the Google classroom and that's where the kids can, that's where the link for the Zoom is. So they have to click on to Google classroom and then they click on the Zoom link and then they're on the meeting. Okay, so that is something that kids can learn how to do independently. And then that's where we're looking at also using CSAW where the activities will go into CSAW and then they will be able to access that. So. Do you wanna mention about Clever? Yes, well, Clever is a SQL sign-on. So Clever is where the, there's a link. Okay, so to answer your question about the Zoom, they click on the Google classroom and then they go and click on the Zoom link and then that's how they access their meeting. The Clever link is also in Google classroom. So when students click on Clever, it gives them, it's a single sign-on and they can access, you know, RAS kids, Dreambox, Lexiacore 5, Scholastic Pro at the elementary level and then the same thing will happen at the secondary level where they have the Clever link is embedded and is linked into Google classroom and then that's where the students at the secondary level can do the same and access all of the online tools we have purchased for students to utilize. Okay, and that's still sort of being worked out and I understand that- No, it's not, Clever is up and running. The only thing we're working on is, now we do have parents that have emailed and we've tried to make sure that they understand the process and so that's where we, and I've done it too, I've been make myself accessible to answer emails and Dr. Bissen and our technology specialists have been responding to parents' request about spyponder accounts, resetting the passwords. So we're trying to make sure that we're able to troubleshoot individual situations but Clever is operational. The only thing that we need to work on is, to my knowledge, is the seesaw at the elementary level in order to get that upper money. Okay, so K-2 still doesn't have access to seesaw so they don't have access to their own Zoom links yet. No, no, no, no. If they go into Google classroom which has nothing to do with seesaw, they can access the Zoom link in order to click on the Zoom link to access the virtual meeting or the class meeting with their teacher. So maybe it's one class at one school but my son does not currently have access to Google classroom or seesaw. The teacher had so far emailed the Zoom link and I totally get that this is day four. I understand it's coming. If it's coming, that's fine but I just, I wanna know that it's something in the process. Well, the Google classroom should be set up by all teachers so that is something that I will, if you send me an email, I will definitely follow up on it. I think that, okay, thank you. Thanks, Ms. Morris. Mr. Cardin. Great. So I also wanna thank the principals and the teachers especially there's been a lot of good feedback about how hard the teachers are trying. And I think that's showing and creating a lot of goodwill. So thank you to all the teachers. There is still some issues, there's always gonna be bumps. There is still some issues but they're mainly related to communication. It wasn't clear at the high school what kids were supposed to be doing on Wednesday. It wasn't clear at Gibbs and Audison, some elementary schools, the teachers were very clear and some weren't. So again, we need to over communicate about everything. And so I do hope that I know everybody's pulled in a hundred different directions but we can short circuit some of the questions and the pain by again, communicating, assuming people don't know, people have not, assuming people have not read our 90 page reopening plan and communicating things as much as possible. I did have, since we discussed the quarantine that occurred this week, I did have a question for Ms. Sheridan or Dr. Franke about where the decision to quarantine classes. I know that's in the document that was sent to parents. It's not in the state DPH desi standard, it's not in the CDC requirements. So I'm curious about where that came from and what the thinking was behind that. I think I can speak on that a little bit. So that is a fluid situation and we have to align ourselves with the board of health and that kind of decision-making. It's not something that as a district we just make alone or unilaterally. It's an alignment with our board of health and with desi. Anytime there's a case, we actually do have to notify desi of it and they're supposed to help with the process of decision-making. So- Did desi recommend quarantining the whole class? I wasn't the one to call desi so I don't know what the specifics are in terms of their recommendations. So- Okay, I mean we have a blanket. Sorry, go ahead Ms. Sheridan. If I could just step in. So we don't decide, we don't decide on the quarantine. The board of health decides who is gonna be quarantined and who is considered a close contact. This was decided quite a while ago that in a classroom situation when we've got students and adults mixing for the entire day that to not consider that cohort as close contacts would be impossible. As you don't know when a teacher's turning around and doing something and the kids have a chance to kind of get closer together and the teacher may not see that immediately to try to kind of sort through things that happen through the entire length of the day is impossible. So a decision was made a while ago that the cohorts would be considered close contacts in that situation. And again, this is, these decisions are made with the goal in keeping our schools open versus taking the chance that we're gonna not understand what kind of contact could have been made and then leave people in a building that may have been exposed and may now be a positive case just spreading it around the building. So these decisions are all made with the goal being to keep our buildings open. So in terms of a classroom that we've decided that a cohort that's together all day long is considered close contacts we did that with the guidance of the Board of Health for sure and again, once that decision is made the Board of Health is the one that issues quarantine. We don't issue quarantines. And just to address something else earlier to be clear on the school side we don't actually do contact tracing. We assist with it and we help kind of identify who may be close contacts in the school building and we provide that information to the Board of Health and there's a lot of reason to make sure that we're assisting getting messages out but we're not the ones who are delivering the quarantine from a legal perspective but we are helping deliver some information and no matter who we call the Board of Health then makes calls. So for example, if we are calling a staff member that's been identified or a student or anybody in a building that's been identified as a positive case we are giving them the information so they're not walking in our buildings the next day. The Board of Health then contacts them as well and in all of these cases the Board of Health is involved at the beginning. So in the cases that we've seen in Arlington so far the Board of Health is generally the one who finds out first and then they go to work right away on the positive case and then working with us to kind of walk through the movements of that particular individual. Right, so something we'll follow up with the Board of Health. I'm not questioning the decision but it's different than what the State Department of Health and DESI is recommending, right? So they don't say quarantine the whole class they say a closed contact is six feet for more than 15 minutes. So it's not the situation of a teacher turning around for five minutes and not seeing what's going on. It's 15 minutes of contact within six feet is their standard. It's great if we decide to have our own standard but I do want to hear more from whoever made that decision specifically the rationale for that for going above and beyond what's being recommended by our state health authorities. So we'll work on that. Well, we do know that piece. You're absolutely right. DESI and DPH collaborated with those guidelines and that guideline was it's fairly new. That wasn't out two months ago. That's a fairly new guideline. And we did discuss it in a principles meeting with the Board of Health and at that time it was their decision to stay with that using the definition of the class, the cohort or all the kids in the bus. All those kids in the bus, all those kids in the class or the cohort are gonna be considered closed contact. So that didn't come from the school that came from the Board of Health. Yeah, I mean, I did ask them they said it came from the school plan. It's not in the August 10th draft of our safety plan. So I don't know where it came from originally that's what we'll need to explore and just make sure that that's the right decision for I mean, it may be the right it's certainly probably the right decision for a kindergarten class but I think we need to think about whether that's the right decision for a fifth grade class for an entire cohort at the middle school. And so I think we'll have a meeting about that with the correct parties. And then the special education stuff we'll wait till that's a separate agenda item. Thank you. Dr. Allison Ampe. Sorry, I have to keep my video off because my internet is flaky and I'm going in and out today. So I echo everything everyone. I echo everyone's thanks to the administration to our principals, to our teachers and to our students for everything they've done to get the year off to a start. I guess I've heard some of the questions that my colleagues have asked. The one thing I hadn't heard yet is I'm wondering I also heard of situations on the ground being very different than what was described by Mr. McNeil and I forget who else about where links were and whether they could find them and when they came in and things like that. And also that there was some confusion about the Gibbs doors and not just for special education students but I'm wondering what, if anything's being done in terms of seeking feedback from parents so that you can see where, you can understand where the communications breakdowns have occurred and just the types of things that people are missing. I don't know that it has to be a formal survey but just talking to people and capturing the information and promulgating it out would be helpful. That's all. Mr. Tillman. Thanks very much. The beginning of a school year is always a challenge and there's always logistical challenges. So and this year is obviously an extraordinary year. So I wanna thank and congratulate everyone, Mr. Mason for getting the facilities ready and Dr. Bode and Dr. McNeil and all of the principals. I think, I hope it sounds like based on a few conversations I had with friends who are teachers in their own public schools that it felt good to be back in school and it felt good to be back in front of our kids whether it was remote or partially or in person with smaller groups. And so congratulations to all. It's never easy to get the school year off to a good start and I'm sure you're making notes and learning. A couple of questions that I have are, one question I guess this is for Dr. McNeil is that there was a specific question that I forwarded which is about students in the remote academy. They don't get snow days. Those in the hybrid program do. So one is that gonna be addressed and two is there a plan to kind of take a look at any discrepancies or differences between student experience in the hybrid and the remote model study it over the course of the year. So modifications can be made either during the year or in the future. Oh absolutely, I'm in close contact with the, we have an elementary principals meeting. We had one today and Ms. Leiner and Ms. Carustas are there with the other elementary principals. I'm in close contact with the other building administrators. So yes, I definitely am interested in being able to compare and contrast the experiences between students in the remote by choice program and our hybrid program. And so we have conversations every day about different things. And I will say this week, we have had parents reach out. Like I said before, I've made myself available and we're trying to answer questions and address individual situations as quickly as possible. So that, and then the specific question is this came up two or three parents emailed me about they might have all been talking to each other about Snowden, I guess. That I'm gonna yield that to Dr. Bodie because she's the superintendent. I mean, she's that's all into her purview. Well, we certainly don't want a difference between a hybrid and a remote programs in that regard. I think everybody should just be patient from the department of education to make some announcements in the next coming weeks. But no, we're not going to have two different experiences. Okay, all right, great. My other question is what is the system of quality control you're using to understand user experiences throughout the district? I, like Ms. Ekston, I've heard from parents who have said great, no problem. I've also heard from parents who said that they had trouble getting on Google classroom or whatever the situation was. And my advice has been to talk to your principal. So I'm just wondering, is there like a method of quality control in which you're gathering data from the schools to get a sense of the user experience? I know this is the first week, but is it so one, are you doing this? And two, is it something that you can do going forward? Oh yeah, so I would echo what you just said. So I want to say this to Ms. Ekston and any other parent who was having difficulty in order for us to address the situation, we need to understand what the situation is. Because every situation is different and it's nuanced, right? So what I recommend is that if a parent is having difficulty signing on to Google classroom, that they reach out to the classroom teacher to make sure that the classroom teacher has set up the Google classroom. Because that is the primary way that that's where we're embedding the links that students will need like Clever, like the Zoom link in order to get onto their virtual meetings. So then if it's a technology error, then that teacher will fill out a help desk ticket and submit it to our tech department. We also have technology specialists at each level. We have one at the elementary level. We have one at the middle school level and we will have one at the high school in order to address certain situations as it relates to resetting spyponder passwords. And then if it's something beyond that person's ability or knowledge, then they could fill out a help desk ticket. So we use those help desk tickets to understand what are the things that are happening system wide. And that is how I knew, because parents were emailing me directly that we had a problem with seesaw. And so then I took that information and then I would discuss that with Dr. Bisson, who was our digital learning, a director of digital learning. And then that's how we started to discuss, okay, what do we need to do in order to absolve the situation? The same thing with Dreambox. You know, we're looking and getting that feedback from the curriculum leaders as well, because they are in tune, they have discussions with teachers and coaches and they're able to understand what is going on system wide. And so we can distinguish between something that might be a user, a specific user error or something that's, you know, we can fix right then and there, if it's just like getting, we setting a password and then understanding something that might be a more of a systems error as it related to Dreambox and seesaw. So, Mr. Stillman, I always add something on to what Dr. McNeil said. I think you're hearing that you're getting one source of quality control and information is directly email. I think there's a lot of anecdotes things are happening, principals standing out in front of school, talking to parents in the morning. I can tell you, parents have not been shy about sending emails at all. So, that's one source. But I do think that we had promised we would do this and we're going to do it, is to have a survey just to see how things are going. I think we should wait at least another week or so just to let things settle a little bit better. But yeah, we do want to hear what's going well and what we need to improve upon. I don't think that anybody thinks that opening this week is a one and done situation. We have things to learn, things to improve and we will. And we will get that information from parents. And for that matter, teachers, teachers, you know, they're very highly motivated to have us go well and they are probably some of our best resources on this. And I just want to distinguish the fact that I was, I thought you were just addressing the technology piece of it. So, there are other sources that we can utilize in order to collect that data. But as it relates to the technology issues, we, you know, if a parent emails a teacher and that there's something that teacher cannot resolve or the technology specialist, then we open up a help desk ticket and then our tech department. And that's a way that we collect data as it relates to the technology piece of this. Yeah, I was only addressing the technology piece, but I, you know, Dr. Bodie is correct that, you know, the plan is to survey parents and that makes sense. I'm wondering if you can get actual data on the number of students who have logged on and not logged on to Google Classroom and all that stuff. And at some point share us some trend. Maybe the trend gets, maybe the number of students gets higher or lower over time. That's what I'm asking. Oh yes, because we do take a, we also take attendance. So when students sign on to there, we also can take attendance to the Zoom platform that we have purchased. And so teachers have a record of when students sign on, how long they've been on. So yes, we can utilize that data to provide a report for you. Yeah, I mean, we've only had about 18, 19 hours, 20 hours of instruction. So I'm not expecting it now, but I'm just saying in the future, it'd be good to sort of get that data just. Absolutely, we can get that for you. Oftentimes the point I'm trying to make, I guess I'm not doing a good job of it, is the data allows us to respond to the anecdotes more thoughtfully. Absolutely. So, Ms. Morgan, so I know on the agenda, we have something about the, I was gonna, there was a conversation back and forth about the doctor, the doctor, Mr. Cardin started about the doctor, Cardin started about nurses in public health. Is this the time to ask these questions or do I wait? What do you want? So if it's related to metrics and learning model transitions, I would hold it. But if it's related to, we did within this topic, talk about the Pierce Thompson situations or things that are tangentially related to that. It's related to that. So just allow me to think about it. Great, now's the time. Okay, thank you for the clarification. So my question to Ms. Franche, Franke, as this is, what is the system of quality control that you have to ensure that there is consistency in all 10 schools or all, at least all the elementary schools or the schools at each level in the administration of COVID rules? I mean, how does that, what's the quality control system to make sure that there's equality, there's consistency in each school? That each, in other words, so you don't create a system in which, which has happened and can happen easily in any system in which individual principals and nurses may be doing what they think is best but not in concert with the rest of the group. Right, so I don't know if people have had a chance to look at the family guidelines as well as the staff guidelines. They are posted and they were posted before school started. On there are very specific guidelines as to what the expectations are. If there's a table of contents, Julie Dunn helped me to format it. You just click on it, whatever subject matter in the table of contents, whether that's testing, contact tracing, attestations, whatever the subject matter is, and it bookmarks it brings you right to it. Our guidelines are actually very similar to surrounding districts because I worked on these with the nursing directors in surrounding districts because the Department of Public Health was not at the table. Let me just back up a tiny bit. Millions of dollars are allocated from the state to something called the School Health Unit at the Department of Public Health. The Boston University has a large grant through that particular unit in which they create programming and education for not just school nurses but other school health providers, social workers, occupational therapists, et cetera. So that is a tool that one can utilize. Well, nothing came that was, it was like crickets, radio silence until about a week and a half before school started or two weeks before school started. But at that point, I had worked with all the surrounding towns to sort of create guidelines because we had no guidance. We had none. There was no health guidance for us. Jesse actually provided some in collaboration with DPH but we weren't really getting it from our own team. So that is a very robust and long manual which is why the bookmarked chapters are important to click into because otherwise they'll just be scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. So all that is there and has been there. It was sent to principals to take a peek at and have them weigh in their thoughts. It was sent to the nurses. Lots of people gave input. Recently, the Board of Health gave input. So that is in place. I'm not sure if I'm answering your question. Yeah, I know that. So I know the guidelines are in place. My question is, so by quality control, I mean the extent to which the principals and the nurses in all the schools at all the levels are the system you have in place to make sure everybody's checking in together on a regular basis to share experiences to make sure there's consistency in the delivery or the execution of the policies at the local level. So I get there's policies and I get there written. What often happens in any organization is that people read those policies and they might interpret them in their own way unless there's a system in place, a system in place in which every few days, every week or so, everybody's on a Zoom call talking about their experiences to make sure there's quality. And so that's by what I mean by quality control. I mean, I guess it wasn't specific. So to what extent are you doing that? So why I'm doing that with the nurses, we do meet once a week. We started meeting before school even started. Not everybody wanted to or could, due to vacations, et cetera. But we do meet and we also have running dialogue. There's always conversations going on between our particular team. Why did somebody do something a certain way? Oh, why didn't they? And also, I get about lately, about 300 emails a day. I get at least 15 phone calls a day, half of those come from my team. So if they have a question about any of the policies that are in place, they know that they can get through to me. But we do have those robust conversations and we call them best practices. We started that long before COVID where people could bring something that they're doing in their particular building that seems to be working. And another provider says, oh, that's a great idea. Can you share that with us? And so it gives us this opportunity to have almost like a small conference and that person is going to lead it and tell us what are their best practices. And we've actually shared those out back in the spring with the schools. So the nurses do work quite collaboratively. They are in communications with each other sometimes with or without me, depending on whether I'm available or not. But we do have our weekly meetings. Okay. I mean, I just want to make the point I'm trying to make is it is, I think at this moment in time with COVID-19 in particular, because there's so much, this obviously, there's heightened attention on this public health issue, obviously. I just think it's super important for the nurses to be meeting on a regular basis, sharing best practices, talking about what they're doing with some involvement by the principals to make sure there's quality control and consistency across the district. Because it won't be a good thing for our town if somebody says, for example, my experience at, and I'm not picking anyone's school, by the way, my experience at Thompson is this way and my experience at Brackett is this way. And so I just think that this is the time to make sure there's a good system in place. The second thing is, you know, this is the first time in a long time that I can recall that we, the school department and the Department of Health and Human Services for the town, I know you interact on a regular basis. And I know there's a lot of interaction. I'm aware. With who? I'm sorry. There's interaction between the school department and the Department of Health and Human Services. That's my broad point. But this is the first time that it's really come to the school committee level, it seems. And so could you describe kind of the extent to which the Board of Public Health, the Department of Health and Services, and the nurses and principals interface to get ready for the start of the school year? I started sending emails to the Board of Health shortly after COVID started. I think they were truly inundated. It's a small department in all fairness to them. And I think they were quite busy. So they couldn't meet because I think they were busy. I sent numerous emails saying that we need to get ready for the fall. And I, they couldn't meet. Couple of weeks ago, they did meet with us and they met with the principals and some of the nurses were in on that meeting. So we did finally have that. And we did meet with just the nurses and then there is supposed to be a weekly meeting with them. There's a lot of changes that were made in meeting dates. So that's been a little difficult to work with. But that is, from my level, that is the experience that I have had. So my request is this, is that we're now in a situation which I am not at all, I think makes sense in which the Board of Public Health is, the Board of Health is making decisions about closing classrooms and quarantining children which are perfectly legitimate. And, but I think now more than ever, the school department and the Department of Health and Human Services have got to be in lockstep talking all the time at all levels so that there's consistency in practice and good communication to parents and all stakeholders in the town. That's my basic point and I was inquiring to see to what degree that has happened over the summer, to what degree that is happening now. It's not good, I'm hearing that there wasn't good communication over the summer, but that is critical, that is critical for this moment in time. The community, I meet every day with the Director of the Board of Health and members of that team every day at noon time and with other, with leadership in the town. So the communication has been ongoing and steady. I think that the situation we find ourselves in is been fairly overwhelming really as we try to manage all the layers of decisions that need to be made. And I think that there's been an effort at the state level between DPAs, Department of Public Health and Department of Education and the Governor's Office to try to coordinate as much as possible. But I think what everyone is finding is that there's more to think about and the implications of than you even realize and to sometimes get into the situation. I think the two incidents this week in the school department were very good learning experiences for us and we're debriefing and we're talking about it. I've had numerous emails just in the last two days with the Board of Health. So it's, we are working at that and everybody understands how important it is. And honestly, it was from that communication in that meeting of summer that got us to the point where we had the testing program I think we're one of two or three communities in the entire state that did this. So there's been a lot of working together over the last couple of months and I expect that that will continue. Good, glad to hear it. And I do congratulate the district on the testing. That was a good, it was a coup for us. All right, thanks. That's that's the end of my questions. Yeah, I think it'll go out of time. Thanks. And just as another note, Mr. Thillman, we, I approached Dr. Bodie earlier this week about setting up a either school committee special meeting or some committee meeting with folks from the Department of Public Health on the town side. And they're absolutely open to meeting with us and have made themselves very available. And I am now stepping on Mr. Cardin's toes, but elected to send that to the CIA, some committee, for lack of another place to send it because we don't, we don't do a lot of public health stuff on the school committee side. So he is going to, or with me and him, we will set up a meeting and make sure that all members are apprised. So I'm grateful that we're going to be able to do that too. Mr. Schwickman. Hey, good evening everybody. Congratulations on an opening. The two things that I really haven't heard, either here or from folks. Let me go through that. How do we do it? Opening monotony preschool. How are we doing with the building and getting that up and running? I was going to share that with the special update. That's right. I do want to hear right now from Ms. Elmer on that one. If it's covered later, that's fine. I just didn't hear it at this point and certainly we're, we've moved to a new building. We're talking about making sure that opened on time. We've been enthralled by stories of getting this thing on time and getting the elevator up and running. So that's sort of hanging out there. And the other one is, when last we talked, we were in the middle of trying to schedule the high school and opening up seats by going all remote and I'm wondering how things are going over there. I think Dr. Janger was here. I don't, Dr. Janger, do you want to weigh in on this question? I will say as you maybe try, I used to see it. That was my talk, I dropped it on my lap. What was the question? How's the opening? Oh, well, you know, it's a little funny to have an opening when there's not a lot of people in the building. So you hear a lot of your information second hand. But I think the opening has gone remarkably smoothly. The sort of primary point of contact for the students who were in remote was really through the teachers. And so they set up their Google classrooms. I think we only had a couple of instances that at least elevated to my point of people not being able to find classrooms. I know there's a lot of connection going on with other levels as people came in. And then we had the special education staff really rallied because it was a big project for them in the two weeks where we reorganized the program to reach out to every single special education student, set up new learning plans and programs, and then plan how they were going to come into the building reorganizing spaces. A lot of them had to move during that two-week period. So that was a huge project for them. And when I walked around on the first day of school, what you saw in every classroom was kids working quietly and teachers working with kids. And it was all the good things that you wanted to see. We had our first freshman orientation meeting where the 360 kids logged in, which is pretty much everybody in the freshman class. And we had a survey as a part of it, which was a good thing to do about how they were feeling. There were a bunch of other survey questions, but that was one that was notable to me. And the overwhelming two emotions that the students described were happy and tired. And if happy and tired is the third day of school, then we're not so bad. But there are another about two to four percent that describe being sad or frustrated or worried. And those are the students that we're really working out on. There was a big push as we discussed at our last meeting to make sure that we were connecting. So we have our attendance office working right from the start. And one of the things that was asked before Mr. Thielman asked about data on student participation. And it's important to know that the state has asked us to change our attendance. So we actually have to affirmatively state that students are in class. So it's remote present or remote absent. So we should have good data on that, but that's been a process of changing norms. The toddler's brought. Sorry, can you come back in a minute, buddy? Okay, I'm on television. Just wait one second. And the deans are following up actually in real time with students who are not logging in or showing up for classes. And so we're really excited about that. And then the teachers right out of the gate are really pushing hard on the reverse field trips. It took me until today to get the form out. And the second I got the format, it was just like they just started binging in. So I think a lot of teachers are very excited about the prospect of finding ways to connect to their students. So in general, I think it's been a good start. And there's a lot of little things to work out. And there'll be sort of two versions of the adjustment. Our staff and our community are not slow to let us know immediately in real time. They're concerned. So a lot of things we just change as we hear them. But absolutely, there'll be surveys going out soon. Find out more specific details. And a follow-up, recognizing it's only half the school year and you're only scheduling half the school year. Where do we stand on the course satisfaction rate and getting kids into the courses they requested? That's an interesting question. I haven't run the report. I will tell you that the other people who've been working around the clock have been our school counselors. So I'm glad you asked that question because I left them off my list of people. Who are particularly snowed. And they're going pretty quickly right now through dozens of meetings a day, shifting around kid schedules, building kid schedules. So that's a question I probably won't be able to answer reliably for a couple of weeks. But I think it looks like we've got a much more comparable ability to fill student schedules that we would in a normal year because of the expansion of the setting. Yeah, in many ways you won't be able to tell until we get to the second semester because there's still that flexibility there. But that was sort of the thing that we were most worried about in terms of moving into all remote. One of the nice things about this model of the semester, especially in this situation, is there are problems that we can kick the next semester. So if there's a section or an issue or a particular need that is not well staffed or well served in this, we can plan that for next semester. And we have held back a little bit of FTE to look at how we can staff those things in the second semester. That's why I thought the four by four block schedule was such a great idea under these circumstances. Thank you for all you've done. I'm just so impressed by what's been going on over at the high school. Thank you again. Thank you. A sneak preview is that the elevator was working and the school is open ballot. Ms. Elma talk about that a little bit later. Mr. Heiner. Again, I'd like to echo what all my colleagues said. Thank you to the staff, the administration. An unofficial survey going, watching the kids going to school down to the Hardy School smiles on their face. Smiles were still there in the afternoon every day this week, which is managed to go by a couple of the other schools and saw that one of the things I was just sitting here thinking as a teacher, there's an opportunity every year to recharge your batteries during the summer. Didn't happen this year. And we are fortunate to have very well educated parents and stuff. And as several of the people have said, they're not shy to get back to people. But I'd asked them to recognize with the little patients the dedication of everybody here. We're all in the business, especially the teachers, to do the best they can for the kids. And just a lot of them have said thank you, but it's an important thing. Thank you all. So I obviously am humbled by the work of our educators on behalf of all of our children, especially my children, because those are the people who I've connected with the most over the last four or five days. And it's been extraordinary. So a couple of notes, I think, that I wanted to just make at the oddison. Mr. Merringer has done a really great job empowering his assistant principals to also communicate with parents, which has been phenomenal. We hear both from him and from his staff and his teachers connect with our children. And that has been extremely helpful. It's worked really well. And so that's been really great as a parent to get two layers of communication. And so I really like seeing that. I, you know, still I'm disappointed that the district isn't looking at email for fourth and fifth graders. This is something that has been an issue for months and months. I had two fifth graders last year. I have two sixth graders now and the experience of them being able to actually see their notifications in their email and work through it is like night and day. So for me, it's much better than it was in June. But I worry about, I think that an elementary solution when it comes to email and communication is not appropriate because kindergarten needs and fifth grade needs are so different. So I do find that to be discouraging that we're still in this place where we're treading water around that. Can I just say I am exploring an alternative to email for the elementary level that's appropriate for that age group. And so we are trying to make sure we get that in place. So I do believe it's going to be a solution. So it's not that I'm not hearing the feedback from parents. We're just looking at a different way that's a little safer and that we think that will be more appropriate for the elementary level. Great. I hope that it integrates as fully as possible with Google Classroom. That would be, that's the most important piece. Absolutely, absolutely. Because the email communication piece, like dear so-and-so, I need blah, blah, blah. Fifth graders, I don't know need that. But to be able to say Mrs. so-and-so posted an announcement or you received a comment on this, the ability to move through that on a list I think is really critical, especially for students in the remote academy. I do think another piece that we, Mr. Cardin talked about communication and absolutely just needing to continuously communicate, especially in those transition times, that fifth to sixth grade transition is really challenging. Even in normal circumstances, it's been especially challenging, I think for people this year, especially for those who have their first child going into sixth grade. And I think that a lot of the communication has been happening from teachers to students, which is extraordinary because teachers are magicians and they're getting the information to the kids, which is where it needs to be. And they're doing an incredible, my experience has been, they're doing an extraordinary job doing that. I do think we want to continue to layer on the additional layers of communication to parents just so that they can feel like they know what's going on and they can step in. And then, otherwise, I thought that Wednesday was interesting and fun in many ways, which was nice. I don't have any high school students, so I do want to hear more. And I'm going to ask Dr. Jinger just to tell us a little bit more about what happened for the high schoolers on Wednesday. One piece of feedback that maybe could be looked at at some point is at the Gibbs, the decision was made to schedule band chorus and orchestra on top of an academic day on top of academic classes. So, for example, I have two students in band and one of them misses a 25-minute ancient sieve class and one misses an ancient sieve in science for 25 minutes each. The other one misses break and math. And while I'm grateful that I have two band students who then can combine and actually have had the full experience of the day, it's a little tricky that we're having kids pulled out of those classes and I'm not really clear on what's happening there. I'm going to provide that as feedback right now and table it as a question because I think it might be more appropriate at CIA or elsewhere. But Dr. Jinger, can you tell us a little bit or if you're still here about how Wednesday went from your perspective at the high school? Sure. Sorry about the camera off. I pulled this downstairs and now a little less in the professional settings. I'm going to leave it off for now. But yeah, so the plan with Wednesday was that students receive again their PE classes so about half the school participates in a PE class, probably about a third on this Wednesday and then all students participate in their advisory activities. And the advisory activities was a video series of questions at PowerPoint about sort of the start of school and social-emotional learning with questions and then an exit ticket and that'll be the pattern for every Wednesday. And then an awful lot of clubs began to meet on Wednesday and we had the guide during the X block we had the meeting with and actually that was during the advisory we had an extended advisory for the freshman class where we had the freshman meeting. And so that's basically the model. Everyone took a breath. Students have independent work to do. My experience just as a person who's got some high school students is that the teachers have hit the ground running and so they've taken to heart the concept that they've only got half a year to cover the content. And so there was a fair amount of getting organized on the part of the students to do their work and figure out what they have to do this week. But that's the basic model that there'll be club meetings, individual meetings with teachers, big chunk of the school do PE. There'll be advisory for everybody and then there may be special events during the X block. Okay, all right. I will say this last piece that there was a fair amount of I think people expected to be more programmed a lot of people. And so people kept saying like what am I doing during that time? And I was like you're not programmed during that time. Right in the X block people were expecting that someone was going to tell them something to do but it's club meetings and extra help, which is something we've done in the past and has been very heavily used but in the first week of school it's not usually something which is very heavily used. Dr. Jinger, what is the length of the day for the high school like theoretically on Wednesdays? So recognize there's limited programming. PE is the first three hours of the day. Advisory is the next half hour. X block is an hour. And then we go to the teacher and the negotiated teacher prep starts at one. Okay. So, okay. All right. And at what time from between I totally get the one o'clock thing and presume there's like a lunch prior to that, I would hope. People keep asking me about lunch and we do not have a lunch scheduled in the day and that's because nobody has every single one of those periods scheduled. So you can the worst case scenario would be a kid who has a what would it be a 1045 PE class followed by advisory and wants to go to a club meeting. And so they would either eat at 1030 or one or they would eat during their club meeting. So we didn't feel in need to put an actual club break in there a lunch break in there for the teachers or the students because every individual actually has one. Okay. And what was another question? So when are teachers available for students at the high school on Wednesdays? So the X block is club priority but teachers can use it. And then 830 to 830 to 1130 could be teacher availability time depending on where their office hours. But an awful lot of groups have planned common planning times during that grade level meetings during that time. The special education CST meeting is during that time. So primarily, I mean people are meeting during that time as they place their office hours people have office hours during X block and then people have office hours before and after school for the 60 minutes. Okay. All right. Thank you. All right. So the next agenda item is a discussion around health metrics and learning model transitions. So Dr. Bode, do you want to give an intro or Dr. McNeil or just go straight to Dr. Franke? I'll just say a couple of words and we'll go with Dr. Franke. Justice, for people who are listening and to remind you you were given a metric that was put together with different shades in terms of cases per 100,000 which would determine whether you would be in remote. If you were in the red zone, you'd be in remote teaching. So Arlington right now is still at around 0.5 incident rate. The state is at 0.8 and that bears significantly into any decisions you would have about school closure. And Mr. Card mentioned earlier bringing Desi into these discussions. They were brought in on Sunday because it involved the school closure. Individual quarantine in classes is not something that they want necessarily to be involved in but at any rate, I would like to because Dr. Franke has really been in a lot of discussions at the state level, local level if she could talk a little bit about how the metrics that we've all seen plays a role in where we would go with decisions about a school closure or a district closure for that matter. Okay, thank you. So one of the things that we have to keep in mind is something actually that was said in the governor's talk today on one of his guest speakers is that when you're looking at metrics, they're referring to them as live metrics because we really can't just say oh and quantify 3% across the board and we're just going to stick to that and that's that. It really isn't a realistic way to approach the problem. Let's say Arlington gets a 3% or even 5% bump up in COVID cases. Well, it really takes investigation as to look where those cases are. If they're in a certain neighborhood because there was a party or if they were in long-term care facilities then we have to really be cautious about do we shut down schools because of a situation like that. And so I just wanted to bring that to light that this is there's just too many variables involved and making a decision where you want some very good fidelity and in your decision process. So in the schools if you know I was thinking about this I thought well okay if we're looking at maybe 300 kids and teachers in the school and 3% we're looking at you know nine cases let's say would we shut down the school. Well it also depends on where in the school it is if it's all contained to one classroom we may not have to shut down the school but if it's scattered around the building then that's something we have to take a serious look at and all of those decisions are not made we're not our own island as a district we do have to work with the Board of Health and we do have to work in that situation with Desi and then it becomes a question of do they have a unit that they can bring in to help with testing I haven't had the experience I've done testing but not with that particular unit so I don't really know how how it works it's pretty new and that's so that's the ambiguity with working with these metrics it's the whole process is a bit nebulous and again I'd love to quantify it for you we can go with a 3% but then we have to look at as I said the variables okay all right so let's do questions from folks around this I'm actually going to go out of order and call on Dr. Allison Ampe first just because this was something that she had asked about and so I think that her questions might help frame the rest of us so Ms. Exton and Mr. Cardin I will be coming back to you shortly so Dr. Allison Ampe okay um so I don't let me put this into context the the document that you have in front is the response that I received from the director of health after talking to Ms. Frankie and and realizing or Dr. Frankie and realizing that it was most important to go on to the director of health um because they are the ones who by I think by regulation are making the final call on a lot of this stuff and I just want to have a better understanding of how they were making decisions I we just got this a couple days ago and I would like a chance to talk with them about it and have not been able to do so and when we've been discussing having a board a meeting with the subcommittee and and with them also I'm expecting I will have questions to bring to that setting but I'm not sure I really have significant questions to bring up right now so okay great Ms. Exton yeah I mean I guess I'm sort of along similar lines just looking at this and it feels like the questions that I have I don't know that the people here necessarily can answer so I guess I'll I'll hold off thanks okay um Mr. Cardin um I'm actually if if okay I'm going to use this to ask about the testing program okay yes so um is there a plan to continue the testing program what's what's the status of that I think Cindy Curran who was working with the board of health organizing all of that I was not a part of that at all we just volunteered the nurses to help out with the process so I don't know if Cindy's on here right now she would be the best person to answer or perhaps Dr. Bode I see her I see is she still here um there's going to be an announcement about that very soon one of the things that's happened in the state in the last really week or two is that they've opened up more sites for free COVID testing and I think that that is a direction that we are going to be moving in but if you could wait a little bit on on this information okay I mean that would be very disappointing I mean I know we're not paying for it and it's it's a huge cost but I also know a lot of people who have done those tests and you know the minimum drives at least a half an hour away waiting for it to get done I mean people aren't the teachers aren't going to do it so I was strongly discouraged that and to the extent you know we need to chip in money we can look at that I don't know what the what the deciding factor is yeah may may also just say that here we have it in our schools we didn't even have people go to a location in Arlington we had only half of our staff and teachers take advantage of it can I can I add just something I'm not going to speak to the testing unless you want to ask about the kind of the logistics of those days but I do want to say that the stop the spread sites while they're not right next door they're all incredibly accessible very easy I've been to two different ones I took my daughter to a third they really were very accessible and very easy to go through and they're all the PCR which is really the gold standard of what we want to see when when people are being tested and the results in each case for us was 24 hours so I did I just wanted to add that I understand that it's not as convenient as walking downstairs of the lobby but the stop the spread sites are very accessible and have been extended we thought that they were going to end first they were going to end at the end of August and then the middle of September but but they're still up and running so I just wanted to share that and I I do work as a broad provider and some of one of their testing sites that's a lot of upfront work we don't have the bandwidth to sort of start that program get a contract with them it's incredibly cheap because of their large grants I mean certainly from an economics perspective it's wonderful but it's the front loading part of getting that up and running is huge and then you sign on for a specific number of people and whether those people show up or not you still continue to pay for them throughout a lot of period of time so um that's PCR it's wonderful it's it's not invasive it's not the nasal pharyngeal it's just the nasal that's that's the road with the MIT and Harvard so but that's a lot of front front loading work just an FYI it's if we had if we had the personnel to start that program I think it would be wonderful but I I just don't think we have that the capacity to do that so I just wanted to add that miss keys and are Mr. Cardin are you done or no no I mean I I don't think anybody was suggesting a stop to spread site but I my understanding was the Armstrong ambulance program which is also with the Broad Institute and also PCR I believe was going to continue and it'd be very disappointing if it stopped that's all I have to say miss keys um I'm only learning about this in the past 24 hours we were under the understanding that there was going to be ongoing testing available for teachers in Arlington couple days a week for free convenient sign up I mean I'm considering that like that was a verbal agreement that we had going forward and it was part of the expectations of our staff members coming back into schools if that's not going to be the case we have a major issue we have COVID in our schools we have had our staff members lives put at risk this week and our children's lives put at risk this week this this is not okay and continuing to keep the schools open without having testing available and telling people people don't have cars and they have to get to these testing sites some of these places have two and three hour waits I'm glad Cindy was able to go and had a short wait but that's not been the experience of many people I know a lot of them are only open during school hours which limits the availability of places you can go to that this is this is not what was promised to us in the reopening plan and our staff is shook right now because they've been put at risk already going back to school here and we want to be back and we want to be with the kids and we are so happy but having this rug yanked out from under us is not okay and I know it's not the schools I know it's the Board of Health that made this change but I think we need to be working with them to get the testing plan back because our staff is not comfortable being in the schools without the testing plan especially after two positives this week Mr. Cardin so based on that I think it's appropriate to make a motion I move that the Allington School Committee strongly recommends that the town use all possible measures to continue the testing program the COVID testing program second discussion Mr. Schiffman yeah thank you I'm shaky about being open without the test with the testing because testing is a is a trailing indicator and we could have something going on in the building for a couple of days before we even know about it to not have the testing readily available that people can get too quickly I think is a huge problem I will support Mr. Cardin's motion Mr. Dexton yeah part of our August 10th reopening motion was to have a plan for testing for teachers and part of that plan was that this was going to be an ongoing testing for teachers on Tuesdays and Thursdays Armstrong Highlands this fall you know as a teacher in a district that's not providing testing I'm uncomfortable that we're not being provided testing I think it was terrific that Arlington was providing testing for teachers and so I will also be supporting this motion Mr. Thielman I'm going to support the motion I'm unclear as to where the bottleneck is is the bottleneck us is the is the bottleneck the school department where is the bottleneck and not making this possible to happen I don't know who was this is the first I've heard of this like five minutes ago so Dr. Bode do you want to take that one are you bringing up questions that I wasn't really prepared to answer tonight because this is very recent and I would prefer to to answer that question at a later time okay that's fine I just this is all new be good to know where the bottleneck is be good to really understand it but I'm going to support Dr. Cardin's motion Mr. Cardin's motion Mr. Heiner I'm fine thank you all right and I um hey hey what about me sorry go ahead Dr. Allison Ampe okay I've had my hand up for a while before the motion but I enthusiastically support Mr. Cardin's motion I was really unhappy to hear what we're hearing tonight it is not how it was described in August it is not what we expected it is not how the information that we had anticipated when we made our decisions I don't understand what the problem is if it's money then tell us how much and and what needs to happen if it's staffing tell us how much and what needs to happen but I think I'm really frustrated by this and you know yes in the best picture the state would be doing all of this stuff but clearly they're not pulling their weight so at least we can take care of our town so that's all Mr. Heiner whether there's a bottleneck or not I'd ask Dr. Bordi to find out as soon as possible what is going on and going on with what Dr. Ampe just said we're here to support whatever it takes to to get this program going on a regular basis all right anybody else so my my comments are just that I think that this is really extremely important it was absolutely part of the understanding that I think most of us had when we went down this path that this was an enormous priority and while I am I am I do think you know for the hundred and hundred now people watching the stop the spread sites are fantastic we went I went this week we had results in 12 hours it was very easy so everybody parents kids for sure go get tested you stop the spread we're so lucky to have it but for our teachers what we had agreed to do was to provide them testing in Arlington two days a week by appointment and and that's what we said we were going to do and I feel very strongly that we need to make good on that promise so I will be supporting Mr. Cardin's motion as well so unless anybody else has any more comments seeing none let's vote on this so Ms. Exton yes Mr. Cardin yes Dr. Allison Ampe yes Mr. Thielman yes Mr. Schlickman yes Mr. Hainer yes and I am also yes so I hope that we can get obviously need a lot more information about this and so we'll certainly be be following up all right is there any more on the health metrics and learning model transitions I see Mr. Thielman because I want to I do want to get to the special ed opening so I see Mr. Thielman and Mr. Schlickman so Mr. Thielman I'm hoping this is within the scope of this if not of my apologies Dr. Frankie when this has come to me if when the students do the checklist in the morning and the parents do the checklist in the morning for their students and they have a fever over 100 degrees or a new cough could you clarify for the public what they are supposed to do in terms of I know they stay home that day I understand they stay home that day but what are they supposed to do you or Ms. Sheridan are they or and and do they have to get a COVID test can you clarify for the public that and and do they have to stay home for 10 days what is what what happens if you have a symptom your child has a fever that's the protocol that's the question hope it's within the scope if not please answer of not what that's my question that's my question so there's a couple of different scenarios and they're all laid out and there's even a graph in the that we utilized with the Cambridge Board of Health and then Julie and Cindy also added to it so Child is Sick has has those symptoms and the symptoms are very specifically laid out and I don't want to be too pedantic on getting into every single one of them let's let's stick to the general COVID symptoms for example fever and cough let's just say that's what the child asked okay it says contact your school nurse and or principal contact your medical provider you have to be out of school at that point there's a there's an algorithm of three different things that they can do they can either keep the child out for a lot of period of time I believe it's 10 days once if they're symptomatic the middle suggestion is is that they go to their primary care provider because it could be a secondary diagnosis right and we really hope we have to hope that the PCP primary care provider tests that child or sends the child for a test so then there's a diagnosis made at that level well the other thing they can do is just go and get tested and could come back with resolution of symptoms for 24 hours and a negative test a negative PCR test we don't accept the antigen tests right now so so it is very clearly laid out there's three different things that parents can do I mean some parents will say I don't want to take my child for a test that's their prerogative but then the child can't come back to school thank you thank you for clarifying that that's all I have thank you all right Mr. Schlickman did you have a question or a comment I do have a comment in that way back in March when we were shutting down I was impressed by the the speed that Arlington worked together with the health folks to make a determination and get things shut down before the governor decided that maybe we have a problem at some point in the future when everybody's breathing again and can be reflective I would like to be able to have a conversation about exactly how this unfolded as long as it's in a way that isn't jeopardizing anybody's Hipper rights because I think that this is a tale of something well done and I think that the community would be well served to hear about that part of our history absolutely I and that and the fact that there is going to be an amazing amount of research coming out of this and I don't mean just medical research but sociological research as well as a result of this so it's it's an excellent point and I'm I'm really interested in reading it when it's done hopefully we'll get there sooner than later All right anybody else okay special education reopening update Dr McNeil and Ms. Omer or what's to start are you going to start okay and I'll start with the preschool because Mr. Schluckman asked about that so for those who aren't aware the monotomy preschool is part of the high school rebuild moved over to the Parmentor building and to answer your question yes we opened on time through extraordinary efforts of the facilities department as well as the teaching staff over at Monotomy they were working without internet up until the Friday before we opened and so they were setting up classrooms still trying to attend all of our district PD I know facilities had people in over the weekend to ensure that but we were able to have the building open elevator I wrote it on Tuesday is is functioning and is required for the students that we currently have so we're glad that that is was ready to go as we were going to have to do some reassignment of spaces if it weren't and yes so the program opened on Monday they had families come in for small visits on Thursday and Friday so that they and the students could see the room I observed drop off the other day because I know there have been some concerns you know just with traffic in the area and you know they have a rolling drop off off up front and it went you know smoothly you know and that was on the second day so things are going well over there and we have one of those classrooms are currently remote because of the options that families have chosen so but everyone else is in person over there as you heard at the beginning this weekend with the remote academy at the elementary level we had to make administrative changes to the general and classroom assignments for some students this was unfortunate it was not okay that you know as schedules finalized from general education and special educators were given it to to start building their schedules that we could not serve as students spread across 36 classrooms in a remote academy and of the 113 students who have IEPs in the remote academy 19 families were contacted by administrators over the weekend to explain the classroom move and understandably very upset I think no one wanted to make that call there's not an excuse for having to make it we're we're in the situation we're at and we apologize it's unsettling it's disruptive it was stressful ultimately 11 families out of those 19s accepted the general ed classroom move and eight declined the classroom move and so there was a mention of having to wave special ed services a general ed assignment is an administrative assignment for families who declined that move they understood that they were waving inclusion services that the services that they are eligible for and could be provided in the general ed classroom assignment that we made they chose not to accept those services during the period of the remote academy as I've explained before the IEP does not change during this pandemic in any of the models but what we have is our special ed educational learning plan and in that we note that during the period of this pandemic the services in the B grid which are the pushing or inclusion services are being declined the other services pull out consultation all those services remain in place and we apologize I know I personally made phone calls the calls were made on Saturday if they were not able to reach someone they left a message and followed up with an email I was speaking to people on Sunday as was Miss Peretz Miss Satsulis who are building administrators along with our special ed coordinators Miss Pravos and Miss Burke who made the phone calls on Saturday and that's that's the update of where we are with that the other thing that we had to do for the remote academies open an SLC class a substantially separate classroom and so that was a new teacher hire it's a teacher who has been working in Wuburn in a similar program and we were able to finalize her hire on Friday as I've explained throughout the process our substantially separate or SLC classrooms supported learning centers are very small cohorts in some cases there's only five students but we've had situations where three opted to be remote and two remained in person as you build the general ed schedule because almost all these students participate in general education as well mirroring a building schedule and in-person schedule with the remote academy schedule makes it impossible for that teacher to work in both the building and work in the remote setting so we had to hire a additional teacher for that program and so three families were notified that the teacher they thought they were having from in-person was not going to be able to do both in-person and remote Dr. Neal, did you want to speak or did you want to ask questions now? We can feel questions and then we can respond to those questions I do want to say one thing this is not just a special education issue this is something that we collectively will be ventured to start placing students into the remote by choice academy this is something where we should have started with the students who have an IEP and understand the services and the impact on staffing that's where we should have started and then built the and then placed the other students so that we will make sure that we identify what was needed with them first and so then we could follow up and make sure that the kids were not spread out so thin over the district so I just want to make sure that this is not just a special education practice this is something that we as all of our administrators as we start to think about placing students in classes this is something that we should have definitely discuss before we start we finalized anybody's schedule Okay so I imagine that every almost everybody has questions or comments on this one so Ms. X then um sure thank you so my first question and I I totally recognize that each case is an individual and so I'm hoping this can be sort of answered broadly just thinking about the questions about students who are coming four days and is it I guess sort of what's the big picture thought around what that's supposed to look like for students who are coming four days are they in the general in classroom you know there's this concern of they're going to get the same thing twice versus some specialized instruction on the other two days can you share just a little bit in a part so um Madam Pierre Pat Maxwell spoke about this um I don't know if Mr. Merringer is going to speak about this as well but it is to your point it is individual so I will speak broadly the intention is and we've spoken of in the past that the students who are coming in four days there may be students for whom that repetition and the opportunity for preview and review and practice is valuable and staying in that general in classroom is what's required for them there are other students for whom it's really the support that they need to do their work from a special educator that they're coming in that second day and they might be doing more of their asynchronous work in any classroom you know situation and I think Gibbs and Oddison have handled this differently which is why you're hearing different things so I'm glad we have both of Mr. Merringer and Ms. Pia or Madam Pia or Maxwell here is that even in in a general classroom a teacher doesn't speak for 40 minutes straight right you know they begin with a mini lesson and then students break up into groups so even within those groups there's you know we're not talking about having to necessarily leave the classroom even if you're working in a small group over here on or within smaller groups I know we're obviously not close like we used to be physically but you know some kids may be working on on one thing while another group is working on I think that's just common practice right that that's how we you know design our instruction in workshop models so all of those things can happen so there isn't one set way of doing it I think probably in hearing us talk about it some people really liked what they heard you know of that possibility and other people you know liked the other possibility I've received feedback about folks who did not want their child to leave the general ed room and folks who did not want their child in the general ed room so it really is individual so can I have Ms. Peretz and Mr. Merringer and Madam Pierre Maxwell if you would like to add anything I'm going to give you an opportunity to do so now yes thank you I think it is really important to remember that this was these were decisions made that were about individual student needs and so that the way that we approach it is going to be very different depending on the student and those needs and it's and for those four day students there were different kinds of classifications of kids just not to get too much into it but another category could be that we're talking about English language learners and we're talking about other students who have other reasons to be present and they were wide and varied so the ways in which we meet those needs and make sure that every piece of that plan is put in place is going to take a little bit of time as we go through the process of of you know coming back into the school session across the elementary schools we've added this extra piece of trying to make sure that across all of our elementary schools this experiences are also the same so that that's going to take some time to develop that as well and so the specific questions of the specific plans are hard to answer at this point but we are working very closely with families to make sure that we are making that experiences as positive and as productive and as you know aren't a lot it's a lot of meeting and greeting and you've been out for six months so you know obviously this week is going to be a lot different than the rest of the year but for most of the students that we have they have two days of live classes and they have Wednesday where they meet synchronously online and then they have two asynchronous lessons and I think for the kids that we've identified as high needs or moderate needs it's really those two asynchronous days that many of the kids struggled with either executive functioning or knowing what to do and needed some help so I think the model that we're really looking at is yes they can go back for the same lesson if that makes sense but we're also trying to provide a place for them to get very individualized services with either a paraprofessional or depending if you're in co-teaching with a special education teacher to help those students in very small groups be able to work their way through the asynchronous days and I think as we get up and running and we start moving into that I think the benefit for many of our kids is going to be able to be in school and really getting help on assignments instead of being at home where maybe an apparent doesn't know what the lesson is what the objections the objectives are how to help how to organize how to get on the google classroom all those different links I think that's really why we want to see many of our moderate and high needs kids in the school and I think that what we're really providing for those kids is really small classes sometimes three four kids with just one adult working them through the work that they need to do and so I actually think it's going to be a great you know advantage to those kids to really be able to be in school and be able to get lessons and if they have questions have teachers down the hall so that's what I'm kind of envisioning is what is going to happen throughout the year however in not being in school for you know since March I think many of these kids and many of what we're trying to do with teachers is just introduction build them up getting back into routine so I don't see the first I see the first couple weeks establishing a rhythm and I think once we get into the rhythm of the school year I think it'll be beneficial for these students had one thing to that too which is that in those small groups and thinking about because the class itself is much smaller right in the hybrid model as as we're all back together and there's also this other element of the fact that like Mr. Merringer just said the children have been out of school for a long time and have very have had varying levels of success with continuing on with their educations and so the teachers are working to really differentiate or will be right now they're building relationships they're getting to know people but as they're informally assessing and then more formally assessing a little bit more down the road you know that instruction that's happening in the classroom is going to have to be differentiated it's going to be really targeting individual needs for all of our students so the idea that like I can see how people have it in their head now that on those second days the experience will be exactly the same like yes on the surface maybe it seems like the experience will be exactly the same but it's actually going to be so differentiated for most of our students that it will be different depending on the ways in which they need to have that curriculum presented to them and working with their teachers on that on that curriculum so I just don't think it's going to be the same all the time and it will be different for different kids and I sorry to interrupt I just think it's also very different from the elementary in the middle school so in the elementary school where you're with one specific teacher for more of the day in the middle school you're going to five or six different classes with five or different five or different you know six different teachers and so I also think the model is going to look a little bit different where you might be getting tutored in another room and getting help with assignments in certain classes that you need help with and it's not going to necessarily look because the setup of a middle school compared to an elementary school is different so I don't think the model will look exactly the same the only thing I also want to add is that also one of the things we've talked about with having students come in for four days is if they were to only come in on the hybrid model and that's why we looked at moderate and high need students not just the level four that the state required one we know that the services are more accessible if they're in person but also the ability to schedule all their services on two days only that they're in person with the state's goal or priority to deliver in-person service would students wouldn't then be able to both participate in their general ed classes if we were also trying to get you know pull them for speech pull them for OT pull them for you know the reading or writing block that they were they were going to receive as well so this also allows for the delivery of those pull out services as well and so that they're able to you know they don't have to be pulled from content areas Madame Pierre Maxwell did you want to add anything sure I mean there isn't much more to add besides why my colleagues have just explained except that it's a beautiful puzzle that we have all the pieces and it's taking time to put them just right on the board and just having the teachers collaborating with each other as Mr. Meringer pointed out the children have about five to seven different teachers which is a different thing to adjust to from elementary to middle school so we want all these different teachers to be collaborating and making sure that we're selecting the right time of the day to make sure the children are receiving everything that they should be receiving on their schedule so it's going to take a minute but I think once we have all the pieces in the right places the fact that we only have half of the children in the building we really will be maximizing the time they have in front of the teachers for them to be able to go deeper in differentiating for them and presenting everything they need in the school year so I think it's taking us a little time to make all that happen but we're on the right track I think also many of our special educators been in several conversations via phone and on email with parents because some of our parents they've been giving the choice of having the four days and some of them want to have just two days and not have the children come for four days and not clear on oh what does that mean are they going to be able to get this service and that service so we are in conversation with our parents to explain to them if your child has quota versus inclusion this is how it differ this is how this is why it's most helpful to have them in the building all the four days and if you pick just two days which you may as a parent then it may create some challenges because we want them to come in the A day so they can get all the information with their other classmates and then the special educational years can pull them out to individualize for them so there's a lot of pieces that we're still working with we have all the pieces now we just ask for the patients to really put them together in the right place but I think we are on the right track thank you you're welcome thanks thanks Ms. Morgan Mr. Curtin thank you so I mean I do think we need to take a look at how this error occurred I mean it's it's I'm grateful that everybody is acknowledging how significant it was and apologizing for it for it and you know Dr. McNeill suggesting how how things should have been done but I do think we need to explore a little bit about why that wasn't raised I mean either it was the coordinators were not at the table when the elementary principals were meeting and discussing this or maybe there were some thought that this could all be worked out but nobody actually sat sat down nobody was assigned to sit down to do it I don't know but we I think I do think we need to take a look at subcommittee about how this occurred so we can prevent it from occurring in the future I mean obviously it's a very special circumstance but there have been other issues where special ed was not consulted in decisions and we want to make sure that that doesn't occur again in the future as to this the other issue with the four-day students you know I am very grateful that we're one of the few districts that is committing to bringing those moderate need kids in more often that is a great thing that we've done and you know we're we're having some some trouble with it as a result but a lot of the trouble is communication I mean I think there is confusion about what's supposed to happen on those two days and if there was more clear communication about this has to be worked out individually for the first couple weeks yeah your student you know isn't the first couple weeks isn't going to look like what it's going to look like for the rest of the year but this is what we're going to do for those first two weeks your students going to be in the library where the teacher's aid it's not always going to be a teacher's aid for the full year sometimes they're going to get a teacher sometimes they're going to get to go back in the classroom to go over difficult material but I think the communication piece was missing and a lot of parents were left confused and then angry when they weren't getting answers so you know again as we we sort of get through this difficult period and look back you know I I do think we need to look at our resources particularly at the middle school level to see whether we have enough team cheers and and coordinators to support the very very different things that are going on on there so that's all for me thanks Dr. Alton Ampe thank you I was going to say that I felt that Mr. that Dr. McNeil explained how the situation came which was my original question but I do like Mr. Cardin's idea that we should take take a look at how this error occurred and make sure that it doesn't happen again and I'd like I'd love to have hear more about it at a subcommittee in terms of actual questions I know that there were a number of parents who were concerned that their student well perhaps needs last year because of the six months off and and the remote learning last year and and everything they're concerned that they're now moderate their needs have increased and I'm wondering when or if these kids will be able to start be being evaluated in case they do have greater needs now so so I think you know we've just highlighted that we've been in school for four days and the things that are working out I think that all students not just special ed students you know we're all for six months and we're all using a process to assess students to see where they are while they're returning that'll be taking place over the next few weeks and that's that's a general ed practice that that'll be happening and so I do think it's important that students get acclimated and return to school and see how they respond to that return the state has also identified that there are you know general ed recruitment services that may be necessary necessary for students who who aren't eligible we've talked before and I've explained the compensatory service process that may be due to the closure and or the need for additional services for new disability related concerns that have risen during the closure so there's two mechanisms for that but I you know four days in I think we need to give students time to get back get you know into the schedule get the routines down start actually teaching content and assessing where they are and then we can you know individually teams can always meet to consider that that's I mentioned at a previous meeting the need to have those discussions around compensatory services or additional services okay thank you Mr. Tillman we've covered a lot of ground my you know I guess the only thing I would like is a frame of reference just of the of the students offered how many students were offered four days and how many took four days in person how many took went remote we'd have to get back to you with that data I don't have it readily at hand I know each principal would have which students are you know that we calculated as who would be eligible for four days I don't think anyone has calculated who accepted who did not at this point we can come back at that within only I'd be good to have also did you have any issues getting enough instructors for in person or remote either one for across the district I think we have I think the right now every I mean I don't want to speak for all the administrators here but TAs are very I'm talking about just especially this just the high need students I'm talking about the high need students to have staff in the building for those coming in yeah no we're staffed for students to come into the building but we still are looking for TAs I know that I know that yeah I know that okay thank you Mr. Schlittman yeah this seems like Judith for yours kind of thing it's a terrible horrible no good very bad day and for those sped families and they're very upset and I can't say that I blame them on the other hand this is something we've never done before and it's very difficult to do I hope we learn from it in that we know and have enough institutional knowledge going forward that we're going to be able to prevent something like this from happening again in the future sure and I think you know to answer the question I think you're all absolutely correct that this highlights the need for universal design and I know that sounds like Ed speak but you know we the classroom assignments were built around homeschool affiliation and that's and that's where they were built and so that was done first and then once the schedules were handed out we were in a situation where you now have special ed kids from every school and there's seven classrooms at a great level and they the driver for their assignment was their homeschool and so if we had built the schedule as Dr. McNeil had said around not just special ed students EL students students receiving RTI if you build it from there they're already included rather than building a schedule handing it out and then trying to fill in on the outside of it so it is a very important lesson for all of us and I look forward to working with you or if you want to talk about more about it in a subcommittee and with my colleagues on this yeah it's frustrating for me because I've scheduled school I've scheduled districts I've done this work and it's it's a process of layering that you take the most difficult components and lay them in first and then the easy ones you slosh around to fill and it doesn't sound like we did it that way and that's really a core component and if you're working in the high school and building a high school schedule you're sort of hip to this but if you're building an elementary schedule you're generally doing this by hand by instinct by talking about kids maybe using stickies or index cards it's a whole different process and having to do the hybrid to remote to a cohort to beat cohort and layering all the IEPs in there is is just too complicated for the way we normally do business right and we usually do that at the building level right we one building so that happens now you combine seven buildings and that's where we're at and I think it's important if I may just jump in for a second is that it is so what Miss Elmer is saying is really key part of this story is that we heard loud and clear that families wanted to stay connected to their home schools and so we were trying very hard to meet that need we in fact also wanted that to happen and so I think it's there certainly are a lot of lessons to learn here and I made some of those phone calls on Saturday and I I really really very much felt for the families and understood why that was so upsetting and was very sorry to have to do that but it is this story of what's happened throughout this pandemic is that we're trying to do things and trying to meet this need and then having information shift and change and having to adjust to it in order to do the best that we can so while I do feel terrible that this happened I know I do welcome the opportunity to process through it in a committee because I think I do understand how it happened and that we have become stronger through that but that that doesn't make it any easier for the people who had to have that happen to them so we do apologize for that but I think it was I think the intention was a good one at the beginning and it was never I would hate to think that it was because people felt that the needs of our students in special education and other students who are afforded services were not being considered throughout the process because they were very heavily considered all throughout the process thank you Mr. Heiner first off I'd like to thank Dr. McNeil for a statement I really appreciate it I'm sorry it wasn't our approach at the beginning this is the most vulnerable and fragile the population that we deal with these kids I'm happy also to hear Mr. Schlipman said about doing this the handling most difficult part hindsight is wonderful I look forward to the subcommittee and straightening this out I have a couple of questions you indicated there were 19 parents that contacted you 11 seemed you've worked something out without going into detail what happens with the other rate so no we contacted 19 family just okay we reached out to the 19 impacted out of the 113 and so we spoke through it with them and again the services can be implemented in this general ed classroom if they're declining that service to remain in the gen ed classroom they're declining it for the period of the remote academy it doesn't change the IEP they haven't given up or waived their right to that service it's that while they're in the remote academy in some cases that means that a student who had one 30 minute session of push and support over the week is not going to receive that but is going to receive their other pullout services it was the B grid those push and services we have spoken with the families in some cases they agreed that in a couple of weeks to see how it goes and we can reconvene as teams to look at without that service is there perhaps another service that needs to be implemented in the C grid to make up for that or to help assist in that area and so those are decisions that teams will be making as they the general ed teacher weighs in on how the students doing how the parent weighs in how the special educator weighs in on how the students doing so just to be clear all the IEPs and all the requirements in the IEP are going to be met so so no they can be met by administratively reassigning their general ed classroom placement if a parent declined that administrative reassignment so think about it if we were had a fourth grade we had four fourth grade classes and I understand what you're saying yes and so reassign them to other classrooms because we collapsed one but they're saying in this instance I don't want the reassignment and so in doing so they are waving the push and services during the period of remote academy if they want to come in person we've talked about that many you know everyone has the option to switch from remote academy to in person then their services would go back to what was in the IEP the IEP hasn't changed so just for clarification if I had a student in a building at the Hardy school and you weren't able to provide that service at the Hardy school you could offer it in another school and I if I declined that I would not it would not be considered violation of the IEP general ed placement is an administrative assignment it's not a special ed placement just like I explained with collapsing a class okay I understand that but I mean if the if you did not have a special education classroom in that and at Hardy and we hope never mind I'll I'll talk to you privately on this thank you I think because the virtual academy is not a brick and mortar building I think that's probably where the parallel is breaking down there there is a classroom in which we could implement it virtually but that my my understanding was that the desi was not going to give you that option to decline to tell the parent you have to go one way or the other even in the virtual yeah so maybe we need to talk it through all right fine thank you taking his head I'm not thank you I would like to also thank Miss Elmer and the special education coordinators and it was not an easy weekend and I know that it's impactful on the families but you know despite the fact that it was a difficult decision to make the decision was made and we followed through with it and again I apologize to the families that were impacted I understand that it was you know very disheartening to get that phone call over the weekend and we're going to continue to try to support the families in any way that we know how and so I do want to thank the administrators Miss Elmer the special education coordinators who reached out to families and I know that they had to engage in those difficult phone calls so thank you very much so my comments I echo what Dr McNeil said I also want to thank our teachers especially at the elementary level who got new kids in their classes on Saturday and Sunday because that's always before you're starting remotely on Monday so you know I think for me where I'm disappointed with this is that again you know I guess it I never thought that it needed to be said in my mind I always thought well of course we're going to schedule our high needs kids first like that's the that's the first thing that we do and I understand that that was done to a certain extent and because we drilled down and the placements were made by the teachers who know these kids the best right they were they were mostly the classes were developed to some extent and mostly by the teachers who had the kids you know for most of last year but I think that you know it's so important and I think that we have an opportunity right now as a broader district and as a community to really become a place where we we prioritize special education in a way that we maybe never have before because I think this is a time when the community you know it was laid bare in the spring how some of these kids just couldn't couldn't manage remote learning couldn't do it with respect to like you know this without the supports that they had and and how disproportionate the impact of having our schools closed was on certain vulnerable populations and I think we're at a place right now where before maybe we didn't want to say oh well you know our biggest priority is to make sure we get our placement for our SLC students correct right and and and maybe we didn't say those kind of things and I do think that we're in a place now where we can say that to the broader community and I think that there will be more understanding and engagement around around having that really be how we as a district work with our with our highest needs populations because I do think there's much broader understanding about you know the impacts around school for these kids and and how challenging the work is that their educators do and that their needs need to be to be really prioritized so I you know I know that all of our principals are working very hard to get the staffing in place that we need to successfully run this schedule and do these programs and I'm glad that we're continuing to work on that and so anyway that's that's all that I have on that may I add one thing yes excuse me I'm sorry I want to make sure though that people understand that our placement does always start there I can always I can only speak for the elementary level but we always start with those students who need that consideration first for whatever reason that is and so in the spring we did our placements based on that for classrooms that would be in person we worked with our teachers we did that collaboratively we did it based on data and from the experiences that the teachers had had with the students remote learning through the time of closure included and then but you have to realize what happened when people made that choice to go to the remote academy which was fine I mean that was the choice and we very much supported people in having that choice obviously when we created that plan is then what we had left were lists that then needed to be reassigned because there was not an ability to anticipate who was going to make that choice and and decide to go to that remote academy so then it went from there and what I've spoken to before but I want to make sure people understand that that is our process and that we will continue to focus on making sure that that is what we lead with is through that lens of equity and inclusion and supporting all of our learners as best we can thank you I just want to add a comment that I don't want anybody to leave this thinking that our most vulnerable students in terms of learning was an afterthought that was not the case at all to some extent it was very fluid doing this time it's been amazing how many people want to change between the two programs and could we could we do the services within a school as it turns out we will be doing all of the services within a school so starting at the school was not necessarily the wrong way to start I think one of our I think we were pushing to get the assignments out too quickly and perhaps if it wouldn't have been so hurtful perhaps is the word is that you get assigned a teacher and then later on you get assigned a different teacher as we try to consolidate how we're going to support the students that honestly was changing all the time so I will say the other good news I think is that we have a standing teacher teaching a remote academy we have excellent teachers and who have been supporting special education students in their own classes over the years and regardless we'll be doing the same thing this year so a lot of attention been given to this it's just I think by moving in too quickly and the assignments became more became noticed what happens is that sometimes you can just wait and do all the tinkering later before you actually say who's the which teacher's class and you've probably just got out too far in front of it Mr. Cardin so I wish we had stopped before those comments I mean I think what happened is kids were reassigned from their home school that's partly why they're so upset in the remote academy for example there's a Dowling fifth grade or whatever maybe it's shared with bracket I don't know all the details but because we can offer we cannot offer inclusion support in that class that student was told after they've already met their classmates so they had to go to a class a different remote academy class which didn't have students from their school in it so by building like like Miss Elmer said by building the assignments around home school we created this issue where these kids with IEPs are the only ones in a class without kids from their home school and I understand the tension there and that was something that perhaps should have been discussed more fully that those two things couldn't happen without without suddenly increasing staff by two or three additional special ed teachers and we didn't hear that nobody raised that and so that's the problem is that this trade-off either scrambling kids across remote academy or being fair to special needs kids wasn't wasn't discussed it wasn't raised by anyone so we need to look at this more in in a subcommittee to get to get a better handle on how this happened but I do regret the comments sort of downplaying that this was just a scrambling that always happens because these kids are being sent to a different school basically there were many kids sent to different schools we tried to balance I don't want to imply that all they were very much front and center in terms of discussions and as some people mentioned we really tried to focus as much as possible on having students stay in their schools we we know that was something that parents and our students value and where we regret this has happened we're going to learn from it I think we can discuss it more in a subcommittee for sure but I really want people to leave this conversation thinking that our educators were not concerned about the education of our most long-lived students because that's our case I don't think it's our case any other comments Mr. Schlickman one quick last comment and this is coming from a dissenting viewpoint and I don't want to get into the I told you so but this is the reason why we should have opened up all remote and gradually brought people in rather than trying to go and do everything all at once because we're seeing problems based on trying to go too fast with a very very difficult model and I just want to explain to Mr. Cardin's point I think the reality of what if we did use universal design would have meant that homeschool affiliation wasn't the driver that classrooms would have been created so that general ed and special ed students from various homeschools were mixed what what and that classrooms are built just like they are in a school building you look at the composition of the classroom you look where you can concentrate resources and that would have meant that that the entire community would not have gotten that homeschool affiliation classes may have been combined from three or four schools because we were building around that group those to your point Ms. Morgan are those decisions we as a community want to make and like I said I welcome that discussion at a subcommittee because it would have far reaching impacts outside of special ed if we operated as a whole from that premise Mr. Heiner I think the biggest part of this is the timing and we've all everybody's acknowledged this and whether universal planning or whatever we knew that we were not going to be in the same situation this September as we have in the past we had to look at it at the bigger I think the parents you're not going to please everybody all the time but to call people up on the weekend before the day before school starts is you're just we're just asking for and I think that's the biggest part no matter what we would have decided it's the timing we realize that and we regret that it happened and all I can say is that we'll learn from it and hopefully we do not have to have a similar situation in the future I just say that intentional or not the special ed population in this town feels like feels that it is the last or the ending thought real or not it's a perception and we have to accept these perceptions Ms. Keys I just want to say please listen to your teachers because we have been saying since mid-August that this wasn't these plans didn't work specifically there's not enough hours in the day to do the special ed services the way they're being scheduled and when you sit here and say why didn't we know about this ahead of time I told you like I said it at a meeting it was in a written document I said it to you ahead of time like if we need to listen to our staff that's on the ground and then we won't have these changes being made at the last minute and I know that we're trying and I know that doing everything on Zoom is a lot harder than and being in person when we can walk around but like the messages aren't getting up like there's there's broken communication somewhere because our teachers have been saying this for weeks that the schedules they were given the kids the services weren't going to work all right any other comments questions okay so the next item is the first read of revisions to the 2020-2021 school calendar I just want to be clear because I got a number of questions from people I guess they saw this on the agenda and they thought that maybe the whole calendar was changing again it's not I believe and Dr. McNeil can speak to this that we're mostly discussing just the additions of conferences which is going to shrink some of our days so anyway Dr. McNeil yes thank you so you're right it does not it's not changing the calendar as a whole we're just looking at the early release Tuesdays that were originally scheduled you know pre-pandemic and then we had to move those particular days to Wednesday and then we had to add the high school and the middle school to that because they were not originally scheduled to have early release every week and then yes some of those conferences were scheduled on those early release days so we had to move those as well I do want to point out a clerical error that I just noticed before our meeting today is I'm looking at the Wednesday before the winter break and on the 23rd December 23rd where it's if you look at the calendar it has the conferences scheduled for elementary and I want to take a moment and speak with Dr. Bode like we want to convene on that and move those conferences to another date so I just want to point that out everything else looks correct though so this is a first read so that's good because we're going to bring it back and do a second read and then we can if you can do that communication between now and then that would be super and then that will spare Ms. Fitzgerald from doing an inline edit right now right so any discussion around the first read of the calendar all right seeing Ms. Eckston I also just so there's this other PD day that will need to be scheduled and again I know scheduling is crazy right now anyway but just again wanting to give parents a heads up about when that will be scheduled Dr. Bode do you have thoughts or you're holding it which PD day are you referring to so it says teachers only and then it says September 2nd and November 3rd those are scheduled and then there's one more to be scheduled right no that would be November 3rd would be our that's that that day has not changed so we usually that's I believe that's election day right and then and then I didn't I thought you held the third of such about the second day came on Wednesday we didn't have in service on Thursday so we still have a day a PD day yeah we banked we banked that day right we banked that day I hear what you're saying now so September 3rd we banked that day and you know I don't I'm going to yield that like you said back to Dr. Bode to discuss that banking of the day but I just want to be clear that November 3rd has not been changed from the original calendar we have one day this is teacher day this bank and right now on this calendar we have it as following the last day of school if for some reason this year we needed to have a transition day who knows what's going to happen with this pandemic we would move that teacher day forward and that would affect the last day of school it would be pushing it out one day so I have a comment about that so what you're saying is is that assuming that we carry on with the AA BB all year and we get to the last day of school that the Monday that are assuming there's no snow days and I'm not getting into snow days but then we're at that Tuesday which would be the last day of school would be a teacher PD day instead of an A day no no as the calendar is right here as the calendar is the last day is I need a little bit bigger different glasses for this one it's June 22nd it stays June 22nd unless we have snow days which we have to talk about later or we would take the days that we did not have for teachers in August and insert it somewhere during the year which you will be consults with about but right now with no snow days and no usage of that teacher day the last day is June 22nd any other questions about the calendar so the one other thing that I wanted to bring up without expectation of a response or solution tonight was just looking at the number of AA versus BB days because we have three holidays Yom Kippur on Monday Indigenous Peoples Day in mid-October and then Election Day on November 3rd so those are three days that we don't have school for in-person school for A students these students will still have two days that week so we just want to keep not looking for a change in the next six weeks obviously or anything but just keep in mind that there is hopefully we can come to a place where there's some more equality between the number of in-person days between both of those models so anyway that's that's for another day okay so Dr. McNeil you'll make that revision with Ms. Fitzgerald and then and we'll come back to approve this and also look at what you just commented on as well brilliant thank you staff hiring Mr. Spiegel okay I'm gonna hope to be quick through this I'm gonna share my screen in a brief presentation so I will oops so this is just you know the brief staffing update that I do every September so just to highlight we have several new administrators so you've met our new Gibbs principal Madam Pierre Maxwell our new Pierce principal Mr. Amati new Odisson Assistant principal Julia McKeown a new elementary special education coordinator Sophie Prevost and we as we've talked to Dr. Bodie talked about the acting remote academy administrators at the elementary level so we've already talked about that for the new teachers so far in terms of who we've hired new to the to the unit AAA 55 new educators including teachers team chairs and specialists we have we didn't have a lot of retirements this past year but we have three who were placing educators who retired 15.5 replacing educators who resigned four replacing educators who moved to a transfer to a different position in the district 13.5 replaced educators on a leave of absence and then 19 so far our new positions in the budget are added because of the needs of this year you've asked in the past for the reasons for resignations and I have been doing exit interviews I've the way I've been doing exit interviews this year primarily has been through a Google form with the question so that the educators who have resigned are sent that and they're invited to respond there's several moving away from the area a few cited commuting time and one teacher specifically cited the change in the school start times as a factor that related to the commuting time other professional career moves within education some for increased compensation from other districts some are pursuing graduate school and some for other personal reasons not to teach right now there's a mix through the different schools Gibbs and Audison had several new teachers this year you know they both Gibbs and Audison added a learning community so you know that's four new teachers their plus special educator so we had we definitely have more new teachers at those schools paraprofessionals this has been brought up tonight that you know we need teaching assistance and building substitutes we've hired so far 39 we still have many more to fill we've we had several resignations in August and even in the past couple weeks of paraprofessionals and the reason I think that they're resigning at this time of year is because other districts are looking for teachers and many of them have become licensed and have been able to secure positions in other and we're still as I said we're still looking to staff these positions I've posted in multiple places and it's it's challenging I think a lot of districts are looking for paraprofessionals right now the process this year you know in past years I've met with every new hire in person in my office this year I met with everyone remotely we also implemented a system thanks to Mr. Mason to do all of the new hire paperwork online through DocuSign still doing obviously quarries and fingerprinting and everything I want to you know especially mentioned our IT department and central office the IT department especially they distributed new devices to all the teachers in the district got a new laptop and all the new educators coming in had to get new devices and new accounts in the district email and Google accounts and everything so they could be set up so the IT department has been working very hard to get all that work done you know we're still continuing the mentor and induction process we had our new teacher training and orientation all virtually this year for the first time and I want to thank all of the presenters all of the mentors all of the curriculum directors who presented and adjusted what they usually do to do it all virtually and especially Marie Janiac our new teacher and mentoring coordinator and I just I also want to mention you know we are still adding staff we have a few teacher hires to make we're still looking for a couple positions in special ed and reading and we're still looking for paraprofessionals we've also adjusted a lot of I can stop the sharing but we we adjusted FTEs of several some of our teachers who were part-time you know 0.6 0.7 0.8 we've increased their FTE to be provided because of the needs we have now based on the reopening and to serve the remote academy and the in-person hybrid students all of our specialists art music phys ed are and library are are servicing students in both both programs and so and I mentioned the learning communities at Gibbs and Audison that we added and increasing the FTEs of the remote academy administrators we do have positions that have not been filled and we may not fill this this year and so we are still covering we're coming some of some of the costs by those vacancies and I think that's that's it I mean this is definitely knew that we're actually had to hire for all of the the schools we have in person this year plus the remote academy which really created some as people have mentioned created new challenges and new staffing needs that we're trying to meet okay I I can take questions great so I'm looking for questions I wasn't going to go in order unless it looks like most people do have questions all right thank you Mr. Spiegel I go I get off easier than everyone else I don't I guess it's late the uh the slide deck is in Novus for people who are watching if they want to go back and review too okay so the next item on the agenda that I put on because I was just hoping for an update was SAT options for HHS students it sounds like we've had some challenges with finding location for students to take the SAT in Arlington I believe that has to do with that the larger spaces and that high school not being available and challenges around getting the potentially using the Audison but if somebody could give an update on what options our students do have that would be great or do we not know at this point I don't I don't think that we know right now we can come back to that information at the next meeting the issue is about large spaces and the issue was about the high school at the time so we will make a report next meeting great that would be great thank you Mr. Theoman yeah just one question on this I as a how many students normally I know Dr. Janger isn't on the call so he well how many students normally take the SAT at a time at the school does anyone know anybody knows you'd also have you'd have you'd have juniors and seniors and sometimes even sophomores taking it so it could be a very number usually cap it usually you sign up and then there's a limit and then it's capped and so I just wonder what the cap is and I just don't because I think it's really more driven by the number of students we get the the proctors yeah based on that we also have students come from other schools as well yeah not okay because I I mean I'm hearing reports that we're getting the red gem fixed we're getting things fixed and it's so there are spaces where things could take place they just don't they just don't well I think actually we don't usually do the SATs in the red gem yeah they are spread out throughout the school with proctors and I don't think we have the proctors but we also weren't committing any high school spaces to SATs at this time and it's too late to register it's too late to sign and it's up to be an SAT site at this point sorry September 24th I don't know the answer of that but I can find out all right I think it'd be good for us to find out thanks Mr. Cardin yeah so I mean I think you know as we're talking about social and emotional learning health of the community one of one of the stressors is this SAT issue and I know that a lot of schools have gone test optional a few have gone test blind but taking this option away from kids is really pulling the rug out from under them and so I do think we need to use our best efforts to to get this administered they were canceled September and October but November and December are still available I think we just need to find a way to do it and I do hope that the administrative team now that we're back in school okay anybody else on this one superintendent search process update this is from Mr. Schiffman with a bullet of voting approval of membership of the superintendent search screening committee Mr. Schiffman great thank you the superintendent's search process committee Dr. Allison Ampe Mr. Cardin myself met on Monday we went through 38 statements of interest from people who were looking to serve on the screening committee these were extraordinary people we had three senior people from desi for example and one of the things he says you don't want to have where desi administrators on the panel then you do teachers so you couldn't take all three and we were looking to make sure that the people we were putting on were coming in with a different lens this different viewpoint on the candidates because there's no sense having a 15-member committee if we all see things the same way we also had a commitment to the community that this committee would be diverse and we would do everything we can to get underrepresented communities involved so that in the 15 members we are nominating and asking for a vote of approval for to identify to us as African-American and three is Asian-American a couple of people who were selected are have identified as LGBTQ we have immigrants parents of special needs children and second language learners and immigrants it is a diverse committee and there are going to be 15 really good thoughtful viewpoints looking at the candidates coming through and I'll just read to the categories that we filled and asking for your approval of this committee the municipal official will be former school committee chair and current member of the select board he took it to motion Joseph Currow the three school committee members would be Dr. Allison Ampe Mr. Cardin and myself the central office administrator would be Allison Elmer the teachers would be Tom Maychuk and Kim Pratt the principals the system principals AEA group would be uh Mr. McEnany and Margaret Creel Thomas the parents are Inaya Wang who's also the CPAC chair Jun Li Li who's a high school parent in Ramona Nichols Granucci who's a Pierce parent the wild card for other stakeholders are Karen Mollering who's a bishop parent Kamal Bayeson who is a downwind parent and a desi senior associate commissioner and Maia Patel Massini who's a student we are also because of the nature of the work recommending two alternates to be elevated to fill membership in the event of a vacancy if one develops during the process the alternates will be expected to attend the meetings but will not have a vote unless they are elevated and this is Bequiteau a student and Sintu Mathi Revalluri who's a parent and a community member so I move that the school committee approve the screening committee for the first round of the superintendent search second discussion Mr. Haynor I assume you've already asked all these people are committed to meet at all the times that you have put together yes what we did was we stated that the attendance would be based on uh membership would be based on a commitment to attend the opening session and we would plan out the uh the meetings from there we haven't locked in the meetings in the future and we may have to work around town meeting hopefully we'll be done by then but uh we obviously can't meet on school committee nights or select board nights so we'll work that out along with the candidates but the first orientation meeting night on um it was in front of me a second ago but next week is a must and if they don't make it to that meeting they're off the other question they have how are your meetings going to be open no these are executive session meetings thank you any other questions or comments before we vote on Mr. Schiffman's motion all right seeing none Ms. Eckston yes Mr. Cardin yes Dr. Allison Ampe yes Mr. Thielman yes Mr. Schiffman yes Mr. Hainer yes and I am also yes okay was that all you had Mr. Schiffman we're done we're we're gonna go to work and uh we'll report back and we have finalists great and do you have plans to change the name of your well we'll we'll get there when we get there right this this search process is wrapping up or no no no what we we'll have work to do in terms of coordinating the finals super okay so we're you know but this is a this is a screening committee which is going to go and screen resumes and interview the candidates and the reason why it is done in the executive session is that by doing it publicly we discourage most applicants who don't want to be exposed is the first round candidate Mr. Hainer real quick how many applicants are you planning on bringing forward three depends on on the pool the discussion usually is around three to five but if you if you if you take a look at the results of the screening there's usually sort of a natural gap in the cut and you're looking at and if you've got four people you're really hung up on and and think you're really great you're not going arbitrarily whack one out of the finals but if you only have three that you love you'll only move three thank you any other comments questions on this can I make a quick comment you sure can I just wanted to say thank you to all the people who have followed we had an amazing group we could have easily filled two or maybe even three three well qualified committees from the applications that we had it was pretty awesome great well let's hold on to those names because I'm sure there's other things that will need people to do all right moving on consent agenda all items listed with an asterisk are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion there will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the committee so requests in which event the item will be considered it is normal sequence vote approval of warrant warrant number two one zero four eight date dated nine fifteen twenty twenty total amount eight eight three oh eight one dot seven four vote approval of minutes school committee September 10th 2020 minutes so move second Ms. Dexton yes Mr. Cardin yes Dr. Allison Ampe yes Mr. Thielman yes Mr. Schlickman yes Mr. Hainer yes and I am yes policy second read KDAB temporary signs and banner BEDH and BEDH dot E public comment at school committee meetings ACAB harassment we have all are these oh these are all those same ones underneath okay so we're on our second read looking from Madam Chair Madam Chair ACAB was approved on the 10th so we don't need to do that all right so let's pull that so we're just looking at KDAB and BEDH and BEDH H dash E I move adoption of policies KDAB BEDH and BEDH D H dash E second discussion seeing none Ms. Eckston yes Mr. Cardin yes Dr. Allison Ampe yes Mr. Thielman yes Mr. Schlickman yes Mr. Hainer yes and I am also yes subcommittee and liaison reports and announcements budget Dr. Allison Ampe nothing to report community relations Mr. Hainer I'm going to be setting up a meeting and hopefully bringing forward to the next meeting I'd like it on the agenda school committee chat CIA Mr. Cardin yes I'll be scheduling a meeting I might want to do it as a standing meeting maybe every week after the school committee weeks meets because we have a lot to go over with the various models and all that and we also have to do the superintendent evaluation thanks facilities Mr. Thielman we have not scheduled the next meeting I walked around the facilities today with Mr. Feeney they're making very good progress and I just try to get a sense of when he'll be ready for report I think we'll definitely have I'm being scheduled in early October and I'll look at schedules and set something up policy Mr. Schlickman okay we just cleared the policy agenda so any other trouble you'd like us to get into we're looking for work superintendent search process and we reported out in the meeting high school building committee no no report we need we give a meeting coming up in early October great liaison reports future agenda items I have Mr. Hayner's school committee chats Mr. Cardin I think it would be useful to hear from the METCO director how things are going with METCO and the various models any others future agenda items announcements liaison reports going once going twice all right and we are not doing executive session even though it's yeah we're not going to do that so that's great meeting we're going to get in at 9.54 guys motion to adjourn great Ms. Ekston yes Mr. Cardin yes Dr. Allison Ampe yes Mr. Thielman yes Mr. Schlickman yes Mr. Hayner yes and I am also yes have a great night be safe thank you thank you everybody thank you all for being here